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'A                     Foreword  by  Franz  Boas                    \ 

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COMING  OF  AGE 
IN  SAMOA 


14  ith  Hihbcus  in  her  hair 


T>  l..( 


To  THE  Girls  of  Tau 

THIS    BOOK    IS 
DEDICATED 

*Ou  te  avatu 

lene't  tusitala 

id  te  ^outou 

O  Teineiti  ma  le  Aualuma 

o  Tail 


4SH173 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

I  AM  indebted  to  the  generosity  of  the  Board  of  Fel- 
lowships in  the  Biological  Sciences  of  the  National  Re- 
search Council  whose  award  of  a  fellowship  made  this 
investigation  possible.  I  have  to  thank  my  father  for 
the  gift  of  my  travelling  expenses  to  and  from  the 
Samoan  Islands.  To  Prof.  Franz  Boas  I  owe  the  in- 
spiration and  the  direction  of  my  problem,  the  training 
which  prepared  me  to  undertake  such  an  investigation, 
and  the^ticism  of  my  results. 

For  a  co-operation  which  greatly  facilitated  the  prog- 
ress of  my  work  in  the  Pacific,  I  am  indebted  to  Dr. 
^Herbert  E.  Gregory,  Director  of  the  B.  P.  Bishop  Mu- 

^seum  and  to  Dr.  E.  C.  S.  Handy  and  Miss  Stella  Jones 
of  the  Bishop  Museum. 

To  the  endorsement  of  my  work  by  Admiral  Stitt 
and  the  kindness  of  Commander  Owen  Mink,  U.  S.  N., 
I  owe  the  co-operation  of  the  medical  authorities  in 
Samoa,  whose  assistance  greatly  simplified  and  expe- 
dited my  investigation.  I  have  to  thank  Miss  Ellen 
M.  Hodgson,  Chief  Nurse,  the  staff  nurses,  the  Sa- 
moan nurses,  and  particularly  G.  F.  Pepe  for  my  first 
contacts  and  my  instruction  in  the  Samoan  language. 
To  the  hospitality,  generosity,  and  sympathetic  co-op- 
eration of  Mr.  Edward  R.  Holt,  Chief  Pharmacist 
Mate,  and  Mrs.  Holt,  I  owe  the  four  months'  resi- 
dence in  their  home  which  furnished  me  with  an  ab- 
solutely essential  neutral_base  from  which  I  could  study 
all    the   individuals   in    the   village   and   yet   remain 

[vii] 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

aloof   from  native   feuds   and   lines   of  demarcation. 

The  success  of  this  investigation  depended  upon  the 
co-operation  and  interest  of  several  hundred  Samoans. 
To  mention  each  one  individually  would  be  impossible. 
I  owe  special  thanks  to  County  Chief  Ufuti  of  Vaitogi 
and  to  all  the  members  of  his  household  and  to  the 
Talking  Chief  Lolo,  who  taught  me  the  rudiments  of 
the  graceful  pattern  of  social  relations  which  is  so  char- 
acteristic of  the  Samoans.  I  must  specially  thank  their 
excellencies,  Tufele,  Governor  of  Manu'a,  and  County 
Chiefs  Tui  Olesega,  Misa,  Sotoa,  Asoao,  andXeuL  the 
Chiefs  Pomele,  Nua,  Tialigo,  Moa,  Maualupe,  Asi, 
and  the  Talking  Chiefs  Lapui  and  Muaoj  the  Samoan 
pastors  Solomona  and  lakopo,  the  Samoan  teachers,^ 
Sua,  Napoleon,  and  Etij  Toaga,  the  wife  of  Sotoa, 
Fa'apua'a,  the  Taupo  of  Fitiuta,  Fofoa,  Laula,  Leauala, 
and  Felofiaina,  and  the  chiefs  and  people  of  all  the  vil- 
lages of  Manu'a  and  their  children.  Their  kindness, 
hospitality,  and  courtesy  made  my  sojourn  among  them 
a  happy  onej  their  co-operation  and  interest  made  it 
possible  for  me  to  pursue  my  investigation  with  peace 
and  profit.  The  fact  that  no  real  names  are  used  in 
the  course  of  the  book  is  to  shield  the  feelings  of  those 
who  would  not  enjoy  such  publicity. 

For  criticism  and  assistance  in  the  preparation  of  this 
manuscript  I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  R.  F.  Benedict,  Dr. 
L.  S.  Cressman,  Miss  M.  E.  Eichelberger,  and  Mrs. 
M.  L.  Loeb.  j^_  j^_ 

The  American  Museum  of  Natural  History, 
March,  1928. 

[viii] 


k 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


FOREWORD   BY  FRANZ   BOAS, 

CIh  AFTER 

I      TN3^ntTrTin>j 


II  A   DAY    IN    SAMOA  .... 

III  THE   EDUCATION   OF  THE   SAMOAN   CHILD 

IV  THE    SAMOAN    HOUSEHOLD     . 

V  THE   GIRL   AND   HER   AGE   GROUP 

VI  THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COMMUNITY    . 

VII  FORMAL^  SEX   RELATIONS 

^  Vm  THE  ROLE   OF  THE   DANCE    . 

IX  THE  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  PERSONALITY 
X 


THE    EXPERIENCE    AND    INJOIVIDUALITY^OF    THE 
AVE&SSE'  (igL 


XI       THE   GIRL   IN   CONFLICT 


XII       MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE       .... 

XIII  OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS  IN   THE   LIGHT  OF 

SAMOAN    CONTRASTS  .... 

XIV  EDUCATION    FOR   CHOICE       .... 


FACE 

xiii 


131 

I51 
185 

195 
234 


APPENDIX 

I     Notes  to   Chapters 249 

II     Methodology  of  This  Study        .         .         .         -259 

III  Samoan  Civilisation  as  It  Is  To-day    .  266 

IV  The  Mentally  Defective  and  the  Mentally  Dis- 

eased          278 

[ix] 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

APPENDIX  PAGU 

V     Materials  upon  Which  the  Analysis  Is  Based   .      28? 

a.  Sample  Record  Sheet 

b.  Table  I.    Showing  Menstrual  History,  Sex  Experi- 

ence and  Residence  in  Pastor's  Household 

c.  Table  H.    Family  Structure,  and  Analysis  of  Table 

d.  Intelligence  Tests  Used 

e.  Check   List   Used    in    Investigation    of   Each    Girl's 

Experience. 

Glossary  of  Native  Terms  Used  in  the  Text        .       295 


W 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


WITH  HIBISCUS  IN  HER  HAIR 

THE   "house   to   meet   THE   STRANGEr" 
REBUILDING  THE   VILLAGE  AFTER  A   HURRICANE 


Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

i8 


A  CHIEF  S  DAUGHTER  AND  THE  BABY  OF  THE  HOUSE- 
HOLD WHOSE  YELLOW  HAIR  WILL  SOME  DAY  MAKE 
A    chief's    HEADDRESS  .... 

THE    LOCAL   PARLIAMENT   IS   CONVENED 

A   DANCING   COSTUME    FOR    EUROPEAN   TASTES 

BY   NAME   "house   OF   MIDNIGHT  DARKNESs" 

A   SPIRIT  OF  THE  WOOD  .... 

IN   THE   BARK   CLOTH   COSTUME   OF   LONG  AGO 

DRESSED  UP  IN  HER  BIG  SISTER's  DANCING  SKIRT 


A    TALKING    CHIEF THE     NATIVE     MASTER    OF 

MONIES         . 

/  FAMOUS  MAKER  OF  BARK  CLOTH 


CERE 


52 

80 

I  12 

I  12 

122 
160 
160 

190 
190 


[xi] 


FOREWORD 

MODERN  descriptions  of  primitive  people  give  us  a 
picture  of  their  culture  classified  according  to  the  varied 
^aspects  of  human  life.  We  learn  about  inventions, 
household  ^unoaiy,  family  and  political  organisation, 
and  j^gjigious  beliefs  and  practices.  Through  a  com- 
parative studjTbf-these  data  and  through  information 
that  tells  us  of  their  growth  and  development,  we 
endeavour  to  reconstruct,  as  well  as  may  be,  the  history 
of  each  particular  culture.  Some  anthropologists  even 
hope  that  the  comparative  study  will  reveal  some  tend- 
encies of  development  that  recur  so  often  that  signifi- 
cant generalisations  regarding  the  processes  of  cultural 
growth  will  be  discovered. 

To  the  lay  reader  these  studies  are  interesting  on 
account  of  the  strangeness  of  the  scene,  the  peculiar 
attitudes  characteristic  of  foreign  cultures  that  set  off 
in  stro-  ig  light  our  own  achievements  and  behaviour. 

However,  a  systematic  description  of  human  activi- 
ties gives  us  very  little  insight  into  the  mental  attitudes 
of  the  individual.  His  thoughts  and  actions  appear 
merely  as  expressions  of  rigidly  defined  cultural  forms. 
We  learn  little  about  his  rational  thinking,  about  his 
friendships  and  conflicts  with  his  fellowmen.  The  per- 
sonal side  of  the  life  of  the  individual  is  almost_eiim- 

[xiii] 


J.J 


FOREWORD  ^■■ 

inated  in  the  systematic  presentation  of  the  cultural  life 
of  the  people.  The  picture  is  standardised,  like  a  col- 
lection of  laws  that  tell  us  how  we  should  behave,  and 
not  how  we  behave  j  like  rules  set  down  defining  the 
style  of  art,  but  not  the  way  in  which  the  artist  elab- 
orates his  ideas  of  beauty  j  like  a  list  of  inventions,  anc'. 
not  the  way  in  which  the  individual  overcomes  tech- 
nical difficulties  that  present  themselves. 

And  yet  the  way  in  which  the  personality  reacts  to 
culture  is  a  matter  that  should  concern  us  deeply  and 
that  makes  the  studies  of  foreign  cultures  a  fruitful 
and  useful  field  of  research.  We  are  accustomed  to 
consider  all  those  actions  that  are  part  and  parcel  of  oui' 
own  culture,  standards  which  we  follow  automatically, 
as  common  to  all  mankind.  They  are  deeply  ingrained 
/  in  our  behaviour.  We  are  moulded  in  their  forms  so 
that  we  cannot  think  but  that  they  must  be  valid  every- 
where. I 

Courtesy,   modesty,  good  manners,   conformity  td. 
definite  ethical  standards  are  universal,  but  what  con-/ 
stitutes  courtesy,  modesty,  good  manners,  and  ethicai 
standards  is  not  universal.     It  is  instructive  to  know 
that  standards-differ  in  the  most  unexpected  ways.     It 
is  still  more  important  to  know  how  the  individual  . 
reacts  to  these  standards. 
^       In  our  own  civilisation  the  individual  is  beset  witi  i 
difficulties  which  we  are  likely  to  ascribe  to  fundamentaJ 
human  traits.    When  we  speak  about  the  difficulties  o.'' 
childhood  and  of  adolescence,  we  are  thinking  of  then  x 

[xiv]  , 


■  J 


FOREWORD 

as  unavoidable  periods  of  adjustment  through  which 
every  one  has  to  pass.  The  whole  psycho-analytic  ap- 
proach is  largely  based  on  this  supposition. 

The  anthropologist  doubts  the  correctness  of  these 
views,  but  up  to  this  time  hardly  any  one  has  taken  the 
pains  to  identif^hjmself  sufficiently  with  a  primitive 
population  to  obtain  an  insight  into  these  problems. 
We  feel,  therefore,  grateful  to  Miss  Mead  for  having 
undertaken  to  identify  herself  so  completely  with 
Samoan  youth  that  she  gives  us  a  lucid  and  clear  pic- 
ture of  the  joys  and  difficulties  encountered  by  the 
young  individual  in  a  culture  so  entirely  different  from 
our  own.  "^i.e  csults  of  her  painstaking  investigation 
confirm  he  suspicion  long  held  by  anthropologists,  that 
much  c  *•  what  we  ascribe  to  human  nature '.is  no  more 
than  a  reaction  to  the  restraints  put  upon  us  by  our 
civilisation. 

Franz  Boas. 


[xv] 


COMING  OF  AGE 
IN  SAMOA 


INTRODUCTION 


DURING  the  last  hundred  years  parents  and  teachers 
have  ceased  to  take  childhood  and  adolescence  for 
granted.  Jlhey  have  attempted  to  fit  education  to  the 
needs  of  the  child,  rather  than  to  press  the  child  into  an 
inflexible  educational  mould.  To  this  new  task  they 
have  been  spurred  by  two  forces,  the  growth  of  the 
S£ience  of  psychology,  and  the  difficulties  and  malad- 
justments of  youth.  Psychology  suggesfed-that  much 
might  be  gained  by  a  knowledge  of  the  way  in  which 
children  developed,  of  the  stages  through  which  they 
passed,  of  what  the  adult  world  might  reasonably  expect 
of  the  baby  of  two  months  or  the  child  of  two  years. 
And  the  fulminations  of  the  pulpit,  the  loudly  voiced 
laments  of  the  conservative  social  philosopher,  the  rec- 
ords of  juvenile  courts  and  social  agencies  all  suggested 
that  something  must  be  done  with  the  period  which 
science  had  named  adolescence.  The  spectacle  of  a 
younger  generation  diverging  ever  more  widely  from 
the  standards  and  ideals  of  the  past,  cut  affifFwithout 
the  anchorage  of  respected  home  standards  or  group 
religious  values,  terrified  the  cautious  reactionary, 
tempted  the  radical  propagandist  to  missionary  crusades 

[I] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

among  the  defenceless  youth,  and  worried  the  least 
thoughtful  among  us. 

In  American  civilisation,  with  its  many  immigrant 
strains,  its  dozens  of  conflicting  standards  of  conduct, 
its  hundreds  of  religious  sects,  its  shifting  economic  con- 
ditions, this  unsettled,  disturbed  status  of  youth  was 
more  apparent  than  in  the  older,  more  settled  civilisa- 
tion of  Europe.  American  conditions  challenged  the 
psychologist,  the  educator,  the  social  philosopher,  to 
offer  acceptable  explanations  of  the  growing  children's 
plight.  As  to-day  in  post-war  Germany,  where  the 
younger  generation  has  even  more  difficult  adjustments 
to  make  than  have  our  own  children,  a  great  mass  of 
theorising  about  adolescence  is  flooding  the  book  shop)Sj 
so  the  psychologist  in  America  tried  to  account  for  the 
restlessness  of  youth.  The  result  was  works  like  that  of 
Stanley  Hall  on  "Adolescence,"  which  ascribed  to  the 
period  through  which  the  children  were  passing,  the 
causes  of  their  conflict  and  distress.  Adolescence  'was 
characterised  as  the  period  in  which  idealism  flowered- 
and  rebellion  against  authority  waxed  strong,  a  period 
during  which  difficulties  and  conflicts  were  absolutely 
inevitable. 

The  careful  child  psychologist  who  relied  upon  ex- 
periment for  his  conclusions  did  not  subscribe  to  these 
theories.  He  said,  "We  have  no  data.  We  know  onjly 
a  little  about  the  first  few  months  of  a  child's  life.  We 
are  only  just  learning  when  a  baby's  eyes  will  fiii'st 
follow  a  light.     How  can  we  give  definite  answers  \to 

[2] 


INTRODUCTION 

questions  of  how  a  developed  personality,  about  which 
we  know  nothing,  will  respond  to  religion?"  But  the 
negative  cautions  of  science  are  never  popular.  If  the 
experimentalist  would  not  commit  himself,  the  social 
philosopher,  the  preacher  and  the  pedagogue  tried  the 
harder  to  give  a  short-cut  answer.  They  observed  the 
behaviour  of  adolescents  in  our  society,  noted  down  the 
omnipresent  and  obvious  symptoms  of  unrest,  and  an- 
nounced these  as  characteristics  of  the  period.  Mothers 
were  warned  that  "daughters  in  their  teens"  present 
special  problems.  This,  said  the  theorists,  is  a  difficult 
period.  The  physical  changes  which  are  going  on  in  the 
bodies  of  your  boys  and  girls  have  their  definite  psy- 
chological accompaniments.  You  can  no  more  evade  * 
one  than  you  can  the  other  3  ^  your  daughter's  body 
changes  from  the  body  of  a  child  to  the  body  of  a 
woman,  so  inevitably  will  her  spirit  change,  and  that 
stormily.  The  theorists  looked  about  them  again  at 
t'-^e  adolescents  in  our  civilisation  and  repeated  with 
P  ceat  conviction,  "Yes,  stormily." 
?-*  cSuch  a  view,  though  unsanctioned  by  the  cautious 
t  jperimentalist,  gained  wide  currency,  influenced  our 
educational  policy,  paralysed  our  parental  eflfort§»  Just 
as  the  mother  must  brace  herself  against  the  baby's 
crying  when  it  cuts  its  first  tooth,  so  she  must  fortify 
herself  and  bear  with  what  equanimity  she  might  the 
unlovely,  turbulent  manifestations  of  the  "awkward 
age."  If  there  was  nothing  to  blame  the  child  for, 
ntiither  was_ there  any  programme  except  endurance 


^^ 


U 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

which  might  be  urged  upon  the  teacher.  The  theor'.st 
continued  to  observe  the  l5eMviour  of  American  ado- 
lescents and  each  year  lent  new  justification  to  his  hy- 
pothesis, as  the  difficulties  of  youth  were  illustrated 
and  documented  in  the  records  of  schools  and  juvenile 
courts. 

But  meanwhile  another  way  of  studying  human  de- 
velopment had  been  gaining  ground,  the  approach  of 
the  anthropologist,  the  student  of  man  in  all  of  liis 
most  diverse  social  settings.  The  anthropologist,  as  he 
pondered  his  growing  body  of  material  upon  the  cus- 
toms of  primitive  people,  grew  to  realise  the  tr_eip.§itt- 
dous-jgle  played,  in  an  individuaPs  life  by  the  ^ocjal 
environment^  in  which  each  is  born  and  reared.  ~One 
by  one,  aspectS-oi  behaviour  which  we  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  consider  invariable  complements  of  our  hu- 
manity were  found  to  be  merely  a  result  of  civilisation, 
present  in  the  inhabitants  of  one  country,  absent,  in  an- 
other country,  and  this  without  a  change  of  race.  F)(e^ 
learned  that  neither  race  nor  common  humanity  caft-^e, 
held  responsible  for  many  of  the  forms  which  ev/^i 
such  basic  human  emotions  as  love  and  fear  and  angilr 
take  under  different  social  conditions.  j 

So  the  anthropologist,  arguing  from  his  observatioius 
of  the  behaviour  of  adult  human  beings  in  other  civi- 
lisations, reaches  many  of  the  same  conclusions  wliidh 
the  behaviourist  reaches  in  his  wo7t^upoh~humanT3aBi7es 
who  have  as  yet  no  civilisation  to  shape  their  malleabjje 
humanity. 

[4] 


INTRODUCTION 

With  such  an  attitude  towards  human  nature  the 
anthropologist  listened  to  the  current  comment  upon 
adolescence.  He  heard  attitudes  which  seemed  to  him 
dependent  upon  social  environment — such  as  rebellion 
against  authority,  philosophical  perplexities,  the  flower- 
ing of  idealism,  conflict  and  struggle — ascribed  to  a 
^period  of  physical  development.  And  on  the  basis  of 
his  knowledge  of  the  determinism  of  culture,  of  the 
plasticity  of  human  beings,  he  doubted.  Were  these 
difiiculties  due  to  being  adolescent  or  to  being  adoles- 
cent  in  America  ? 

For  the  biologist  who  doubts  an  old  hypothesis  or 
wishes  to  test  out  a  new  one,  there  is  the  biological 
laboratory.    There,  under  conditions  over  which  he  can 
exercise  the  most  rigid  control,  he  can  vary  the  light, 
the  air,  the  food,  which  his  plants  or  his  animals  re- 
ceive, from  the  moment  of  birth  throughout  their  life- 
time.    Keeping  all  the  conditions  but  one  constant,  he  q^ 
can  make  accurate  measurement  of  the  effect  of  the     ^^ 
one.    This  is  the  ideal  method  of  science,  the  method  "^jJ^tJ 
of  the-  controlled  experiment,  through  which  all  hy-  -^  '^    ' 
potheses  may  be  submitted  to  a  strict  objective  test.  ' 

Even  the  student  of  infant  psychology  can  only  par- 


tially reproduce  thesejdeal  laboratory  conditions.  He 
cnnnot  j:ontrol  the  pre-natal  environment  of  the  child 
whom  he  will  later  subject  to  objective  ineasuremeht. 
.rie  can,  however,  control  the  early  environment  of  the 
iihiH,  the  first  few  days  of  its  existence,  and  decide 
what  sounds  and  sights  and  smells  and  tastes  are  to 

Ci] 


COMING  OF  AG^  IN  SAMOA 

impinge  upon  it.  But  for  the  student  of  the  adoles- 
cent there  is  no  such  simplicity  of  working  conditions. 
What -We. wish  to  test  is  no  less  than  the  effect  of  civili- 
sation upon  a  developing  human  being  at  the  age'^of 
puberty.  To  test  it  most  rigorously  we  would  have  to 
construct  various  sorts  of  different  civilisations  and  sub- 
ject large  numbers  of  adolescent  children  to  these  dif- 
,  ferent  environments.  We  would  list  the  influences  the 
I  effects  of  which  we  wished  to  study.  If  we  wished  to 
study  the  influence  of  the  size  of  the  family,  we  would 
construct  a  series  of  civilisations  alike  in  every  respect 
except  in  family  organisation.  Then  if  we  found  dif- 
ferences in  the  behaviour  of  our  adolescents  we  could 
say  with  assurance  that  size  of  family  had  caused  the 
difference,  that,  for  instance,  the  only  child  had  a  more 
troubled  adolescence  than  the  child  who  was  a  member 
of  a  large  family.  And  so  we  might  proceed  through 
a  dozen  possible  situations — early  or  late  sex  knowl- 
edge, early  or  late  sex-experience,  pressure  towards  pre- 
cocious development,  discouragement  of  precocious  de- 
velopment, segregation  of  the  sexes  or  coeducation  ( 
from  infancy,  division  of  labour  between  the  sexes  or 
common  tasks  for  both,  pressure  to  make  religious 
choices  young  or  the  lack  of  such  pressure.  We  would 
vary  one  factor,  while  the  others  remained  quite  con- 
stant, and  analyse  which,  if  any,  of  the  aspects  of  our 
civilisation  were  responsible  for  the  difficulties  of  oui*'^ 
children  at  adolescence.    — -^  I 

Unfortunately,  such  ideal  methods  of  experiment' 

[6]  1 


INTRODUCTION 

are  denied  to  us  when  our  materials  are  humanity  and 
the  whole  fabric  of  a  social  order.  The  test  colony  of 
Herodotus,  in  which  babies  were  to' be  isolated  and  the 
results  recorded,  is  not  a  possible  approach.  Neither 
is  the  method  of  selecting  from  our  own  civilisation 
groups  of  children  who  meet  one  requirement  or  an- 
other. Such  a  method  would  be  to  select  five  hundred 
adolescents  from  small  families  and  five  hundred  from 
large  families,  and  try  to  discover  which  had  experi- 
enced the  greatest  difficulties  of  adjustment  at  adoles- 
cence. But  we  could  not  know  what  were  the  other 
influences  brought  to  bear  upon  these  children,  what 
effect  their  knowledge  of  sex  or  their  neighbourhood 
environment  may  have  had  upon  their  adolescent  de- 
velopment. 

What  method  then  is  open  to  us  who  wish  to  con- 
duct a  human  experiment  but  who  lack  the  power  either 
to  construct  the  experimental  conditions  or  to  find  con- 
trolled examples  of  those  conditions  here  and  there 
throughout  our  own  civilisation?  The  only  method  is 
that^of  the  anthropologist,  to  go  to  a^ -different  civilisa- 
tion and  make  a.  study  of  human  beings  under  different 
cultural  ^conditions  in .  SiiQie_x»ih£iL  part  _of  the  world. 
For  such  studies  the  anthropologist  chooses  quite  sim- 
p]  I  peoples,  primitive  peoples,  whose  society  has  never 
at^ined  the  complexity  of  our  own.^  In  this  choice  of 
primitive  peoples  like  the  Eskimo,  the  Australian,  the 
South  Sea  islander,  or  the  Pueblo  Indian,  the  anthro- 
pologist is  guided  by  the  knowledge  that  the  analyg[s 

[7] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

V  of  a  simpler  civilisation  is  more  possible  of  attainment. 

'         In  complicated  civilisations  like  those  of  Europe,  or 

the  higher  civilisations  of  the  East,  years  ol.  study  are 

necessary  before  the  student  can  begin  to  understand 

"{he  forces  at  work  within  them.    A  study  of  the  French 

family  alone  would  involve  a  preliminary  study  of 

French  history,  of  French  law,  of  the  Catholic  and 

^  ^Protestant  attitudes  towards  sex  and  personal  relations. 

^.    .     jp\.  primitive  people  without  a  written  language  present 

^r      Ta  much  less  elaborate  problem  and  a  trained  student 

vv"*   I  can  master  the  fundamental  structure  of  a  primitivfeg^ 

society  m  a  lew  months.  ^         \\ 


fP 


Ml 


Furthermore,  we  do  not  choose  a  simple  peasant 
community  in  Europe  or  an  isolated  group  of  moun- 
ain  whites  in  the  American  South,  for  these  people's 
ays  of  life,  though- simple,  belong  essentially  to  the 
istorical  tradition  to  which  the  complex  parts  of  Eu- 
opean  or  American  civilisation  belong.  Instead,  we 
!♦.  choose  primitive  groups  who  have  had  thousands  of 
■years  of  historical  development  along  com.pletely  dif- 
U^ferent  lines  from  our  own,  whose  language  does  not 
■.possess_our  Indo-European  categories,  whose  religious 
ideas  are  of  a  different  nature,  whose  social  organisa- 
tion is^  not  onIy~srmpler  but  yery"different  from  our 
ownr~F*fom~ these  contrasts,  which  are  vividT  enough 
to  startle  and  enlighten  those  accustomed  to  our  o''  /n 
way_of  life  and  simple  enough,  to.be  grasped  guicklj^, 
it  is  possible  to  learn  many  things  about  the  effect  ol 
a  civilisation  upon  the  individuals  within  it. 

[8]  "  1 


INTRODUCTION 

So,  in  order  to  investigate  the  particular  problem,  I 
chose  to  go  not  to  Germany  or  to  Russia,  but  to  Samoa, 
a  South  Sea  island  about  thirteen  degrees  from  the 
Equator,  inhabited  by  a  brown  Polynesian  people.  Be- 
cause I  was  a  woman  and  could  hope  for  greater  in- 
timacy in  working  with  girls  rather  than  with  boys,  and 
because  owing  to  a  paucity  of  women  ethnologists  our 
knowledge  of  primitive  girls  is  far  slighter  than  our 
knowledge  of  boys,  I  chose  to  concentrate  upon  the 
•adolescent  girl  in  Samoa. 

But  in  concentrating,  I  did  something  very  different 
Prom  what  I  would  do  if  I  concentrated  upon  a  study 
of  the  adolescent  girl  in  Kokomo,  Indiana.  In  such  a 
study,  I  would  go  right  to  the  crux  of  the  problem  j  I 
would  not  have  to  linger  long  over  the  Indiana  lan- 
guage, the  table  manners  or  sleeping  habits  of  my  sub- 
jects, or  make  an  exhaustive  study  of  how  they  learned 
to  dress  themselves,  to  use  the  telephone,  or  what  the 
concept  of  conscience  meant  in  Kokomo.  All  these 
things  are  the  general  fabric  of  American  life,  known 
to  me  as  investigator,  known  to  you  as  readers. 

But  with  this  new  experiment  on  the  primitive  ado- 
lescent girl  the  matter  was  quite  otherwise.  She  spoke  a 
language  the  very  sounds  of  which  were  strange,  a  lan- 
guage in  which  nouns  became  verbs  and  verbs  nouns  in 
the  most  sleight-of-hand  fashion.  All  of  her  habits 
of  life  were  different.  She  sat  cross-legged  on  the 
ground,  and  to  sit  upon  a  chair  made  her  stiff  and  mis- 
erable.   She  ate  with  her  fingers  from  a  woven  plate  j 

[9] 


»1 

/ 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

she  slept  upon  the  floor.  Her  house  was  a  mere  circle 
of  pillars,  roofed  by  a  cone  of  thatch,  carpeted  with 
water-worn  coral  fragments.  Her  whole  material  en- 
vironment was  different.  Cocoanut  palm,  breadfruit, 
and  mango  trees  swayed  above  her  village.  She  had 
never  seen  a  horse,  knew  no  animals  except  the  pig, 
dog  and  rat.  Her  food  was  taro,  breadfruit  and  ba- 
nanas, fish  and  wild  pigeon  and  half-roasted  pork,  and 
land  crabs.  And  just  as  it  was  necessary  to  understand 
this  physical  environment,  this  routine  of  life  which 
was  so  different  from  ours,  so  her  social  environment 
in  its  attitudes  towards  children,  towards  sex,  towards 
personality,  presented  as  strong  a  contrast  to  the  social 
environment  of  the  American  girl.. 

I  concentrated  upon  the  girls  of  the  community.  I 
spent  the  greater  part  of  my  time  with  them.  I  studied 
most  closely  the  households  in  which  adolescent  girls 
lived.  I  spent  more  time  in  the  games  of  children  than 
in  the  councils  of  their  elders.  Speaking  their  lan- 
guage, eating  their  food,  sitting  barefoot  and  cross- 
legged  upon  the  pebbly  floor,  I  did  my  best  to  mini- 
mise the  differences  between  us  and  to  learn  to  know 
and  understand  all  the  girls  of  three  little  villages  on 
the  coast  of  the  little  island  of  Tau,  in  the  Manu'a 
Archipelago. 

Through  the  nine  months  which  I  spent  in  Samoa, 
I  gathered  many  detailed  facts  about  these  girls,  the 
size  of  their  families,  the  position  and  wealth  of  their 
parents,  the  number  of  their  brothers  and  sisters,  'vhe 
amount  of  sex  experience  which  they  had  had.    AH  of. 

[lO] 


INTRODUCTION 

these  routine  facts  are  summarised  in  a  table  in  the 
appendix.  They  are  only  the  barest  skeleton,  hardly 
the  raw  materials  for  a  study  of  family  situations  and 
sex  relations,  standards  of  friendship,  of  loyalty,  of 
personal  responsibility,  all  those  impalpable  storm  cen- 
tres of  disturbances  in  the  lives  of  our  adolescent  girls. 
•<?\.nd  because  these  less  measurable  parts  of  their  lives 
were  so  similar,  because  one  girl's  life.w'as  so  niuch_like-. 
another's,  in  an  uncomplex,  uniform  culture  like  Samoa, 
I^feel  justified  in  generalising  although  I  studied  only 
fifty  girls  in  three  small  neighbouring  villages. 

In  the  following  chapters  I  have  described  the  lives 
of  these  girls,  the  lives  of  their  younger  sisters  who 
will  soon  be  adolescent,  of  their  brothers  with  whom 
a  strict  taboo  forbids  them  to  speak,  of  their  older  sis- 
ters who  have  left  puberty  behind  them,  of  their  elders, 
the  mothers  and  fathers  whose  attitudes  towards  life 
determine  the  attitudes  of  their  children.  And  through 
this  description  I  have  tried  to  answei^he  question 
which  sent  me  to'  Samoa:  Are  the  disturbances  which 
vex  our  adolescents  due  to  the  nature  of  adolescence 
itself  or  to  the  civilisation j^  Under  different  conditions  / 
does  adolescence  present  a  different  picture? 

Also,  by  the  nature  of  the  problem,  because  of  the 
unfamiliarity  of  this  simple  life  on  a  small  Pacific 
island,  I  have  had  to  give  a  picture  of  the  whole  social 
life  of  Samoa,  the  details  being  selected  always  with 
a  view  to  illuminating  the  problem  of  adolescence. 
Matters  of  political  organisation  which  neither  interest"^ 
ncr  influence  the  young  girl  are  not  included.    Minutiae 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

of  relationship  systems  or  ancestor  cults,  genealogies 
and  mythology,  which  are  of  interest  only  to  the  spe- 
cialist, will  be  published  in  another  place.  But  I  have 
/triedrto  present  to  the  reader  the  Samoan  girl  in  her 
*,social  setting,  to  describe  the  course  of  her  life  from 
birth  until  death,  the  problems  she  will  have  to  solve, 
the  values  which  will  guide  her  in  her  solutions,  the 
pains  and  pleasures  of  her  human  lot  cast  on  a  South 
Sea  island^ 

Such  a  description  seeks  to  do  more  than  illuminate 
this  particular  problem.  It  should  also  give  the  reader 
some  conception  of  a  different  and  contrasting  civilisa- 
tion, another  way  of  life,  which  other  members  of  the 
human  race  have  found  satisfactory  and  gracious.  We 
know  that  our  subtlest  perceptions,  our  highest  values, 
are  all  based  upon  contrast 3  that  light  without  darkness 
or  beauty  without  ugliness  would  lose  the  qualities 
which  they  now  appear  to  us  to  have.  And  similarly, 
if  we  would  appreciate  our  own  civilisation,  this  elabo- 
rate pattern  of  life  which  we  have  made  for  ourselves 
as  a  people  and  which  we  are  at  such  pains  to  pass  on 
to  our  children,  we  must  set  our  civilisation  over  against 
other  very  different  ones.  The  traveller  in  Europe 
returns  to  America,  sensitive  to  nuances  in  his  own 
manners  and  philosophies  which  have  hitherto  gone 
unremarked,  yet  Europe  and  America  are  parts  of  one 
civilisation.  It  is  with  variations  within  one  great  p;'t- 
tern  that  the  student  of  Europe  to-day  or  the  student 
of  our  own  history  sharpens  his  sense  of  appreciatif^'n* 
But  if  we  step  outside  the  stream  of  Indo-Europ'^an 

[12]  I 


INTRODUCTION 

culture,  the  appreciation  which  we  can  accord  our  civili- 
sation is  even  more  enhanced.  Here  in  remote  parts 
of  the  world,  under  historical  conditions  very  different 
from  those  which  made  Greece  and  Rome  flourish  and 
fall,  groups  of  human  beings  have  worked  out  patterns 
of  life  so  different  from  our  own  that  we  cannot  ven- 
ture any  guess  that  they  would  ever  have  arrived  at 
our  solutions.  /E^zh.  primitive  people  has  selected  one 
set  of  human  gifts,  one  set  of  human  values,  and  fash- 
ioned for  themselves  an  art,  a  social  organisation,  a  re- 
ligion, which  is  their  unique  contribution  to  the  history 
of  the  human  spirit,  v 

Samoa  is  only  one  of  these  diverse  and  gracious 
patterns,  but  as  the  traveller  who  has  been  once  from 
home  is  wiser  than  he  who  has  never  left  his  own  door 
step,  so  a  knowledge  of  one  other  culture  should 
sharpen  our  ability  to  scrutinise  more  steadily,  to  ap- 
preciate more  lovingly,  our  own. 

And,  because  of  the  particular  problem  which  we  set 
out  to  answer,  this  tale  of  another  way  of  life  is 
mainly  concerned  with  education,  with  the  process  by 
which  the  baby,  arrived  cultureless  upon  the  human 
scene,  becomes  a  full-fledged  adult  member  of  his  or 
her  society.  The  strongest  light  will  fall  upon  the 
ways  in  which  Samoan  education,  in  its  broadest  sense, 
differs  from  our  own.  And  from  this  contrast  we  may 
be  able  to  turn,  made  newly  and  vividly  self-conscious 
and  self-critical,  to  judge  anew  and  perhaps  fashion 
differently  the  education  we  give  our  children. 


[13] 


II 

A    DAY    IN    SAMOA 

THE  life  of  the  day  begins  at  dawn,  or  if  the  moon 
has  shown  until  daylight,  the  shouts  of  the  young  men 
may  be  heard  before  dawn  from  the  hillside.  Uneasy 
in  the  night,  populous  with  ghosts,  they  shou>  lustily) 
to  one  another  as  they  hasten  with  their  work.  As  the 
dawn  begins  to  fall  among  the  soft  brown  roofs  and 
the  slender  palm  trees  jtand  out  against  a  colourless, 
^^^leaming^a,  Tovers'slip  home  from  trysts  beneath  the 
palm  trees  or  in  the  shadow  of  Reached  canoes,  that  the 
light  may  find  each  sleeper  in.  his  appointed  place. 
Cocks  crow,  negligently,  and  a^iiimrill-volced  bird  cries 
from  the  breadfruit  trees.  The  insistent  roar  of  the 
reef  seems  muted  to  an  undertone  for  the  sounds  of 
a  waking  village.  Babies  cry,  a  few  short  wails  before 
sleepy  mothers  give  them  the  breast.  Restless  little 
children  roll  out  of  their  sheets  and  wander  drowsily 
down  to  the  beach  to  freshen  their  faces  in  the  sea. 
Boys,  bent  upon  an  early  fishing,  start  collecting  their 
tackle  and  go  to  rouse  their  more  laggard  companions. 
Fires  are  lit,  here  and  there,  the  white  smoke  hardly 
visible  against  the  paleness  of  the  dawn.  The  "w  hole 
village,  sheeted  and  frowsy,  stirs,  rubs  its  eyes,  and 
stumbles  towards  the  beach.     "Talofa!"     "Talofa!" 

[14] 


A  DAY  IN  SAMOA 

"Will  the  journey  start  to-day?"  "Is  it  bonito  fishing 
your  lordship  is  going?"  Girls  stop  to  giggle  over  some 
young  ne'er-do-well  who  escaped  during  the  night  from 
an  angry  father's  pursuit  and  to  venture  a  shrewd  guess 
that  the  daughter  knew  more  about  his  presence  than 
she  told.  The  boy  who  is  taunted  by  another,  who  has 
succeeded  him  in  his  sweetheart's  favour,  grapples  with 
his  rival,  his  foot  slipping  in  the  wet  sand.  From  the 
other  end  of  the  village  comes  a  long  drawn-out,  pierc- 
ing wail.  A  messenger  has  just  brought  word  of  the 
death  of  some  relative  in  another  village.  Half-clad, 
unhurried  women,  with  babies  at  their  breasts,  or  astride 
their  hips,  pause  in  their  tale  of  Losa's  outraged  de- 
parture from  her  fathers  house  to  thegreater  kindness 
in  the  home  of  her  undo,  to  wonder  who  is  dead.  Poor 
relatives  whisper  thqfrrequests  to  rich  relatives,  men 
make  plans  to  set  a  nsh  trap  together,  a  woman  begs 
a  bit  of  yellow  dye  from  a  kinswoman,  and  through 
the  village  sounds  the  rhythmic  tattoo  which  calls  the 
young  men  together.  They  gather  from  all  parts  of 
the  village,  digging  sticks  in  hand,  ready  to  start  inland 
to  the  plantation.  The  older  men  set  off  upon  their 
more  lonely  occupations,  and  each  household,  reassem- 
bled under  its  peaked  roof,  settles  down  to  the  routine 
of  the  morning.  Little  children,  too  hungry  to  wait 
for  the  late  breakfast,  beg  lumps  of  cold  taro  which 
they  munch  greedily.  Women  carry  piles  of  washing 
to  the  sea  or  to  the  spring  at  the  far  end  of  the  village, 
or  set  off  inland  after  weaving  materials.    The  older 

[15] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

girls  go  fishing  on  the  reef,  or  perhaps  set  themselves 
to  weaving  a  new  set  of  Venetian  blinds. 

In  the  houses,  where  the  pebbly  floors  have  been 
swept  bare  with  a  stiff  long-handled  broom,  the  women 
great  with  child  and  the  nursing  mothers,  sit  and  gossip 
with  one  another.  Old  men  sit  apart,  unceasingly 
twisting  palm  husk  on  their  bare  thighs  and  muttering 
old  tales  under  their  breath.  The  carpenters  begin 
work  on  the  new  house,  while  the  owner  bustles  about 
trying  to  keep  them  in  a  good  humour.  Families  who 
will  cook  to-day  are  hard  at  workj  the  taro,  yams  and 
bananas  have  already  been  brought  from  inland  j  the 
children  are  scuttling  back  and  forth,  fetching  sea 
water,  or  leaves  to  stuff  the  pig.  As  the  sun  rises 
higher  in  the  sky,  the  shadows  deepen  under  the 
thatched  roofs,  the  sand  is  burning  to  the  touch,  the 
hibiscus  flowers  wilt  on  the  hedges,  and  little  children 
bid  the  smaller  ones,  "Come  out  of  the  sun."  Those 
whose  excursions  have  been  short  return  to  the  village, 
the  women  with  strings  of  crimson  jelly  fish,  or  baskets 
of  shell  fish,  the  men  with  cocoanuts,  carried  in  baskets 
slung  on  a  shoulder  pole.  The  women  and  children 
eat  their  breakfasts,  just  hot  from  the  oven,  if  this  is 
cook  day,  and  the  young  men  work  swiftly  in  the  mid- 
day heat,  preparing  the  noon  feast  for  their  elders. 

It  is  high  noon.  The  sand  burns  the  feet  of  the 
little  children,  who  leave  their  palm  leaf  balls  and 
their  pin-wheels  of  frangipani  blossoms  to  wither  in 
the  sun,  as  they  creep  into  the  shade  of  the  houses.   The 

[i6] 


A  DAY  IN  SAMOA 

women  who  must  go  abroad  carry  great  banana  leaves 
as  sun-shades  or  wind  wet  cloths  about  their  heads. 
Lowering  a  few  blinds  against  the  slanting  sun,  all  who 
are  left  in  the  village  wrap  their  heads  in  sheets  and 
go  to  sleep.  Only  a  few  adventurous  children  may 
slip  away  for  a  swim  in  the  shadow  of  a  high  rock, 
some  industrious  woman  continue  with  her  weaving, 
or  a  close  little  group  of  women  bend  anxiously  over 
a  woman  in  labour.  The  village  is  dazzling  and  deadj 
any  sound  seems  oddly  loud  and  out  of  place.  Words 
have  to  cut  through  the  solid  heat  slowly.  And  then 
the  sun  gradually  sinks  over  the  sea. 

A  second  time,  the  sleeping  people  stir,  roused  per- 
haps by  the  cry  of  "a  boat,"  resounding  through  the 
village.  The  fishermen  beach  their  canoes,  weary  and 
spent  from  the  heat,  in  spite  of  the  slaked  lime  on  their 
heads,  with  which  they  have  sought  to  cool  their  brains 
and  redden  their  hair.  The  brightly  coloured  fishes  are 
spread  out  on  the  floor,  or  piled  in  front  of  the  houses 
until  the  women  pour  water  over  them  to  free  them 
from  taboo.  Regretfully,  the  young  fishermen  sepa- 
rate out  the  "Taboo  fish,"  which  must  be  sent  to  the 
chief,  or  proudly  they  pack  the  little  palm  leaf  baskets 
with  offerings  of  fish  to  take  to  their  sweethearts. 
Men  come  home  from  the  bush,  grimy  and  heavy 
laden,  shouting  as  they  come,  greeted  in  a  sonorous 
rising  cadence  by  those  who  have  remained  at  home. 
They  gather  in  the  guest  house  for  their  evening  kava 
drinking.     The   soft   clapping   of   hands,   the    high- 

[17] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

pitched  intoning  of  the  talking  chief  who  serves  the 
kava  echoes  through  the  village.  Girls  gather  flowers 
to  weave  into  necklaces  j  children,  lusty  from  their 
naps  and  bound  to  no  particular  task,  play  circular 
games  in  the  half  shade  of  the  late  afternoon.  Finally 
the  sun  sets,  in  a  flame  which  stretches  from  the  moun- 
tain behind  to  the  horizon  on  the  sea,  the  last  bather 
comes  up  from  the  beach,  children  straggle  home,  dark 
little  figures  etched  against  the  skyj  lights  shine  in  the 
houses,  and  each  household  gathers  for  its  evening 
meal.  The  suitor  humbly  presents  his  offering,  the 
children  have  been  summoned  from  their  noisy  play, 
perhaps  there  is  an  honoured  guest  who  must  be  served 
first,  after  the  soft,  barbaric  singing^_f_ Christian  hymns 
and  the  brief  and  graceful  evening  prayer.  In  front 
of  a  house  at  the  end  of  the  village,  a  father  cries  out 
the  birth  of  a  son.  In  some  family  circles  a  face  is 
missing,  in  others  little  runaways  have  found  a  haven! 
Again  quiet  settles  upon  the  village,  as  first  the  head 
of  the  household,  then  the  women  and  children,  and 
last  of  all  the  patient  boys,  eat  their  supper. 

After  supper  the  old  people  and  the  little  children 
are  bundled  off  to  bed.  If  the  young  people  have 
guests  the  front  of  the  house  is  yielded  to  them.  For 
day  is  the  time  for  the  councils  of  old  men  and  the 
labours  of  youth,  and  night  is  the  time  for  lighter 
things.  Two  kinsmen,  or  a  chief  and  his  councillor,  sit 
and  gossip  over  the  day's  events  or  make  plans  for  the 
morrow.    Outside  a  crier  goes  through  the  village  an- 

[i8] 


'4 


•..ti 


/'//;•  " tl'jiise  t'j  ?tteet  the  Stra/i'ier" 


.Hik    '  wssn 


Rebu:. 


A  DAY  IN  SAMOA 

nouncing  that  the  communal  breadfruit  pit  will  be 
opened  in  the  morning,  or  that  the  village  will  make 
a  great  fish  trap.  If  it  is  moonlight,  groups  of  young 
men,  women  by  twos  and  threes,  wander  through  the 
village,  and  crowds  of  children  hunt  for  land  crabs  or 
chase  each  other  among  the  breadfruit  trees.  Half  the 
village  may  go  fishing  by  torchlight  and  the  curving 
reef  will  gleam  with  wavering  lights  and  echo  with 
shouts  of  triumph  or  disappointment,  teasing  words  or 
smothered  cries  of  outraged  modesty.  Or  a  group  of 
youths  may  dance  for  the  pleasure  of  some  visiting 
maiden.  Many  of  those  who  have  retired  to  sleep, 
drawn  by  the  merry  music,  will  wrap  their  sheets  about 
them  and  set  out  to  find  the  dancing.  A  white-clad, 
ghostly  throng  will  gather  in  a  circle  about  the  gaily 
lit  house,  a  circle  from  which  every  now  and  then  a 
few  will  detach  themselves  and  wander  away  among 
the  trees.  Sometimes  sleep  will  not  descend  upon  the 
village  until  long  past  midnight  j  then  at  last  there  is 
only  the  mellow  thunder  of  the  reef  and  the  whisper 
of  lovers,  as  the  village  rests  until  dawn. 


[19] 


Ill 

THE   EDUCATION   OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

BIRTHDAYS  are  of  little  account  in  Samoa.  But  for 
the  birth  itself  of  the  baby  of  high  rank,  a  great  feast 
will  be  held,  and  much  property  given  away.  The  first 
baby  must  always  be  born  in  the  mother's  village  and 
if  she  has  gone  to  live  in  the  village  of  her  husband, 
she  must  go  home  for  the  occasion.\  For  several  months 
before  the  birth  of  the  child  the  father's  relatives  have 
brought  gifts  of  food  to  the  prospective  mother,  while 
the  mother's  female  relatives  have  been  busy  making 
pure  white  bark  cloth  for  baby  clothes  and  weaving 
dozens  of  tiny  pandanus  mats  which  form  the  layette. 
The  expectant  mother  goes  home  laden  with  food  gifts 
and  when  she  returns  to  her  husband's  family,  her 
family  provide  her  with  the  exact  equivalent  iq^  mats 
and  bark  cloth  as  a  gift  to  them.  At  theylbirth  j/tself 
the  father's  mother  or  sister  must  be  present  to  care  for 
the  new-born  baby  while  the  midwife  and  the  relatives 
of  the  mother  care  for  her.  There  is  no  privacy  about 
a  birth.  Convention  dictates  that  the  mother  should 
neither  writhe,  nor  cry  out,  nor  inveigh  against  the 
presence  of  twenty  or  thirty  people  in  the  house  who 
sit  up  all  night  if  need  be,  laughing,  joking,  and  play- 
ing games.     The  midwife  cuts  the  cord  with  a  fresh 

[20] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

bamboo  knife  and  then  all  wait  eagerly  for  the  cord  to 
fall  off,  the  signal  for  a  feast.     If  the  baby  is  a  girl, 
the  cord  is  buried  under  a  paper  mulberry  tree  (the 
tree  from  which  bark  cloth  is  made)  to  ensure  her    -S^-^ 
growing  up  to  be  industrious  at  household  tasks  j  for   \C^^ 
a  boy  it  is  thrown  into  the  sea  that  he  may  be  a  skjlled 
fisherman,  or  planted  under  a  taro  plant  to  give  him 
industry  in  farming,  y  Then  the  visitors  go  home,  the 
mother  rises  and  goes  about  her  daily  tasks,  and  thq 
new  baby  ceases  to  be  of  much  interest  to  any  one.\ 
The  day,  the  month  in  which  it  was  born,  is  forgotten i;^^-. 
Its  first  steps  or  first  word  are  remarked  without  exu- 
berant comment,  without  ceremony.     It  has  lost  all 
ceremonial   importance   and  will  not  regain  it  again 
until  after  puberty j   in  most  Samoan  villages  a  girl.-'^ 
will  be  ceremonially  ignored  until  she  is  married.    And 
even  the  mother  remembers  only  that  Losa  is  older 
than  Tupu,  and  that  her  sister's  little  boy,  Fale,  j 
younger  than  her  brother's  child,  Vigo.    Relative,  agf 
is  of  great  importance,  for  the  elder  may  always  com- 
mand the  younger — until  the  positions  of  adult  life 
upset  the  arrangement — but  actual  age  may  well  be 
forgotten'i^ 

Babies  are  always  nursed,  and  in  the  few  cases  where 
the  mother's  milk  fails  her,  a  wet  nurse  is  sought  among 
the  kinsfolk.  From  the  first  week  they  are  also  given 
other  food,  papaya,  cocoanut  milk,  sugar-cane  juice j 
the  food  is  either  masticated  by  the  mother  and  then 
put  into  the  baby's  mouth  on  her  finger,  or  if  it  is 

[21] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

liquid,  a  piece  of  bark  cloth  is  dipped  into  it  and  the 
child  allowed  to  suck  it,  as  shepherds  feed  orphaned 
lambs.  The  babies  are  nursed  whenever  they  cry  and 
there  is  no  attempt  at  regularity.  Unless  a  woman 
expects  another  child,  she  will  nurse  a  baby  until  it  is 
two  or  three  years  old,  as  the  simplest  device  for  paci- 
fying its  crying.  Babies  sleep  with  their  mothers  as 
long  as  they  are  at  the  breast  j  after  weaning  they  are 
usually  handed  over  to  the  care  of  some  younger  girl 
in  the  household.  They  are  bathed  frequently  with 
the  juice  of  a  wild  orange  and  rubbed  with  cocoanut 
oil  until  their  skins  glisten. 

/The  chief  nurse-maid  is  usually  a  child  of  six  or 
seven  who  is  not  strong  enough  to  lift  a  baby  over  six 
months  old,  but  who  can  carry  the  child  straddling  the 
left  hip,  or  on  the  small  of  the  back.  A  child  of  six 
or  seven  months  of  age  will  assume  this  straddling 
position  naturally  when  it  is  picked  up.  Their  diminu- 
tive nurses  do  not  encourage  children  to  walk,  as  babies 
who  can  walk  about  are  more  complicated  charges. 
They  walk  before  they  talk,  but  it  is  impossible  to  give 
the  age  of  walking  with  any  exactness,  though  I  saw 
two  babies  walk  whom  I  knew  to  be  only  nine  months 
old,  and  my  Impression  is  that  the  average  age  is  about 
a  year.  The  life  on  the  floor,  for  all  activities  within 
a  Samoan  house  are  conducted  on  the  floor,  encourages 
crawling,  and  children  under  three  or  four  years  of 
age  optionally  crawl  or  walk. 

From  birth  "^^-j  *-^^  ^g^rfr^*^^  ^r  fiir^  o  child's 

[22] 


J 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

education  is^exceedinglY  simple.  They  must  be  house- 
broken,  a  matter  made  more  difficult  by  an  habitual 
indifference  to  the  activities  of  very  small  children. 
They  must  learn  to  sit  or  crawl  within  the  house  and 
never  to  stand  upright  unless  it  is  absolutely  necessary; 
never  to  address  an  adult  in  a  standing  position;  to  stay 
out  of  the  sun  J  not  to  tangle  the  strands  of  the  weaver  j 
not  to  scatter  the  cut-up  cocoanut  which  is  spread  out 
to  dry  J  to  keep  their  scant  loin  cloths  at  least  nominally 
fastened  to  their  persons  j  to  treat  fire  and  knives  with 
proper  caution  j  not  to  touch  the  kava  bowl,  or  the  kava 
cup  J  and,  if  their  father  is  a  chief,  not  to  crawl  on  his 
bed-place  when  he  is  by.  These  are  reallyfsimply^a^ 
series  of  avoidances,  enforced  by  occasional  cuffings  andj 
a  deal  of  exasperated  shouting  and  ineffectual  conver^J 
sation. 

The  weight  of  the  punishment  usually  falls  upon  the  t 
next  oldest  child,  who  learns  to  shout,  "Come  out  ofj 
the  sun,"  before  she  has  fully  appreciated  the  necessity 
of  doing  so  herself.  By  the  time  Samoan  girls  and 
boys  have  reached  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  age 
these  perpetual  admonitions  to  the  younger  ones  have 
become  an  inseparable  part  of  their  conversation,  a 
monotonous,  irritated  undercurrent  to  all  their  com- 
ments. ..I  have  known  them  to  intersperse  their  re- 
marks every  two  or  three  minutes  with,  "Keep  still," 
"Sit  still,"  "Keep  your  mouths  shut,"  "Stop  that  noise," 
uttered  quite  mechanically  although  all  of  the  little 
ones  present  may  have  been  behaving  as  quietly  as  a 

[23] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

row  of  intimidated  mice.     On  the  whole,  this  last  re- 
quirement o£.5ilence  is  contmually  mentioned  and  never 
enforced.     The  little  nurses  are  more  interested  in 
-^eace  than  in  forming  the  characters  of  their  small 
charges  and  when  a  child  begins  to  howl,  it  is  simply 
/yrdragged  out  of  earshot  of  its  elders.     No  mother  will 
y    1^*1  ever  exert  herself  to  discipline  a  younger  child  if  an 
tolder  one  can  be  made  responsible.   -^ 

If  small  families  of  parents  and  children  prevailed 
in  Samoa,  this  system  would  result  in  making  half  of 
the  population  solicitous  and  self-sacrificing  and  the 
other  half  tyrannous  and  self-indulgent.  But  just  as 
a  child  is  getting  old  enough  so  that  its  wilfulness  is 
becoming  unbearable,  a  younger  one  is  saddled  upon 
it,  and  the  whole  process  is  repeated  again,  each  child 
being  disciplined  and  socialised  through  responsibility 
for  a  still  younger  oner'^ 

This  fear  of  the  disagreeable  consequences  resulting 
from  a  child's  crying,  is  so  firmly  fixed  in  the  minds 
of  the  older  children  that  long  after  there  is  any  need 
for  it,  they  succumb  to  some  little  tyrant's  threat  of 
making  a  scene,  and  five-year-olds  bully  their  way  into 
expeditions  on  which  they  will  have  to  be  carried,  into 
weaving  parties  where  they  will  tangle  the  strands,  and 
cook  houses  where  they  will  tear  up  the  cooking  leaves 
or  get  thoroughly  smudged  with  the  soot  and  have  to 
be  washed — all  because  an  older  boy  or  girl  has  be- 
come so  accustomed  to  yielding  any  point  to  stop  an 
outcry.  , 

[24]  \ 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

This  method  of  giving  in,  coaxing,  bribing,  diverting 
the  infant  disturbers  is  only  pursued  within  the  house- 
hold or  the  relationship  group,  where  there  are  duly 
constituted  elders  in  authority  to  punish  the  older  chil- 
dren who  can't  keep  the  babies  still.  Towards  a  neigh- 
bour's children  or  in  a  crowd  the  half-grown  girls  and 
boys  and  even  the  adults  vent  their  full  irritation  upon 
the  heads  of  troublesome  children.  If  a  crowd  of  chil- 
dren are  near  enough,  pressing  in  curiously  to  watch 
some  spectacle  at  which  they  are  not  wanted,  they  are 
soundly  lashed  with  palm  leaves,  or  dispersed  with  a 
shower  of  small  stones,  of  which  the  house  floor  always 
furnishes  a  ready  supply.  This  treatment  does  not 
seem  actually  to  improve  the  children's  behaviour,  but 
merely  to  make  them  cling  even  closer  to  their  fright- 
ened and  indulgent  little  guardians.  It  may  be  sur- 
mised that  stoning  the  children  from  next  door  pro- 
vides a  most  necessary  outlet  for  those  who  have  spent 
so  many  weary  hours  placating  their  own  young  rela- 
tives. And  even  these  bursts  of  anger  are  nine-tenths 
gesture.  No  one  who  throws  the  stones  actually  means 
to  hit  a  child,  but  the  children  know  that  if  they  repeat 
their  intrusions  too  often,  by  the  laws  of  chance  some 
of  the  flying  bits  of  coral  will  land  in  their  faces. 
Even  Samoan  dogs  have  learned  to  estimate  the  pro- 
portion of  gesture  that  there  is  in  a  Samoan's  "get  out 
of  the  house."  They  simply  stalk  out  between  one  set 
of  posts  and  with  equal  dignity  and  all  casualness  stalk 
in  at  the  next  opening. 

[25] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

By  the  time  a  child  is  six  or  seven  she  has  all  the 
essential  avoidances  well  enough  by  heart  to  be  trusted 
with  the  care  of  a  younger  child.  And  she  also  de- 
velops a  number  of  simple  techniques. ,  She  learns  to 
weave  firm  square  balls  from  palm  leaves,  to  make 
pin-wheels  of  palm  leaves  or  frangipani  blossoms,  to 
climb  a  cocoanut  tree  by  walking  up  the  trunk  on  flex- 
ible little  feet,  to  break  open  a  cocoanut  with  one  firm 
well-directed  blow  of  a  knife  as  long  as  she  is  tall,  to 
play  a  number  of  group  games  and  sing  the  songs  which 
go  with  them,  to  tidy  the  house  by  picking  up  the  litter 
on  the  stony  floor,  to  bring  water  from  the  sea,  to 
spread  out  the  copra  to  dry  and  to  help  gather  it  in  when 
rain  threatens,  to  roll  the  pandanus  leaves  for  weaving, 
to  go  to  a  neighbouring  house  and  bring  back  a  lighted 
fagot  for  the  chief's  pipe  or  the  cook-house  fire,  and  to 
exercise  tact  in  begging  slight  favours  from  relatives. 

But  in  the  case  of  the  little  girls  all  of  these  tasks 
are  merely  supplementary  to  the  main  business  of  baby- 
tending.  Very  small  boys  also  have  some  care  of  the 
younger  children,  but  at  eight  or  nine  years  of  age  they 
are  usually  relieved  of  it.  Whatever  rough  edges  have 
not  been  smoothed  off  by  this  responsibility  for  younger 
children  are  worn  off  by  their  contact  with  older  boys. 
For  little  boys  are  admitted  t-)  interesting  and  important 
activities  only  so  long  as  their  behaviour  is  circumspect 
and  helpful.  Where  small  girls  are  brusquely  pushed 
aside,  small  boys  will  be  patiently  tolerated  and  they 
become  adept  at  making  themselves  useful.    The  four 

[26] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

or  five  little  boys  who  all  wish  to  assist  at  the  impor- 
tant business  of  helping  a  grown  youth  lasso  reef  eels, 
organise   themselves  into   a   highly   efficient   working 
teamj  one  boy  holds  the  bait,  another  holds  an  extra 
lasso,  others  poke  eagerly  about  in  holes  in  the  reef 
looking  for  prey,  while  still  another  tucks  the  captured 
eels  into  his  lavalava.    The  small  girls,  burdened  with  ,,- 
heavy  babies  or  the  care  of  little  staggerers  who  are 
too  small  to  adventure  on  the  reef,  discouraged  by  the 
hostility  of  the  small  boys  and  the  scorn  of  the  older 
ones,  have  little  opportunity  for  learning  the  more  ad- 
venturous forms  of  work  and  play.    So  while  the  little 
boys  first  undergo  the  chastening  effects  of  baby-tending 
and  then  have  many  opportunities  to  learn  effective  co- 
operation under  the  supervision  of  older  boys,  the  girls'  ' 
education  is  less  comprehensive.     They  have  a  high 
standard  of  individual  responsibility  but  the  community  | 
provides  them  with  no  lessons  in  co-operation  with  one  I 
another.    This'  is  particularly  apparent  in  the  activities  ■• 
of  young  people  J  the  boys  organise  quickly;  the  girls 
waste  hours  in  bickering,  innocent  of  any  technique  for 
quick  and  efficient  co-operation. 

And  as  the  woman  who  goes  fishing  can  only  get 
away  by  turning  the  babies  over  to  the  little  girls  of 
the  household,  the  little  girls  cannot  accompany  their 
aunts  and  mothers.  So  they  learn  even  the  simple 
processes  of  reef  fishing  much  later  than  do  the  boys. 
They  are  kept  at  the  baby-tending,  errand-running 
stage  until  they  are  old  enough  and  robust  enough  to 

[27] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

work  on  the  plantations  and  carry  foodstuffs  down  to 
the  village. 

A  girl  is  given  these  more  strenuous  tasks  near  the 
age  of  puberty,  but  it  is  purely  a  question  of  her  phys- 
ical size  and  ability  to  take  responsibility,  rather  than 
of  her  physical  maturity.  Before  this  time  she  has 
occasionally  accompanied  the  older  members  of  the 
family  to  the  plantations  if  they  were  willing  to  take 
the  babies  along  also.  But  once  there,  while  her 
brothers  and  cousins  are  collecting  cocoanuts  and  rov- 
ing happily  about  in  the  bush,  she  has  again  to  chase 
and  shepherd  and  pacify  the  ubiquitous  babies. 
^■As  soon  as  the  girls  are  strong  enough  to  carry  heavy 
loads,  it  pays  the  family  to  shift  the  responsibility  for 
the  little  children  to  the  younger  girls  and  the  adoles- 
cent girls  are  released  from  baby-tending.  It  may  be 
said  with  some  justice  that  the  worst  period  of  their 
"^  I  lives  is  over.  Never  again  will  they  be  so  incessantly 
\  at  the  beck  and  call  of  their  elders,  never  again  so 
^tyrannised  over  by  two-year-old  tyrants.  All  the  irri- 
tating, detailed  routine  of  housekeeping,  which  in  our 
civilisation  is  accused  of  warping  the  souls  and  souring 
the  tempers  of  grown  women,  is  here  performed  by 
children  under  fourteen  years  of  age.  A  fire  or  a  pipe 
to  be  kindled,  a  call  for  a  drink,  a  lamp  to  be  lit,  the 
baby's  cry,  the  errand  of  the  capricious  adult — these 
haunt  them  from  morning  until  night.  With  the  in- 
troduction of  several  months  a  year  of  government 
schools  these  children  are  being  taken  out  of  their 

[28] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

homes  for  most  of  the  day.  This  brings  about  a  com- 
plete disorganisation  of  the  native  households  which 
have  no  precedents  for  a  manner  of  life  where  mothers 
have  to  stay  at  home  and  take  care  of  their  children 
and  adults  have  to  perform  small  routine  tasks  and 
run  errands. 
.  Before  their  release  from  baby-tending  the  little 
girls  have  a  very  limited  knowledge  of  any  of  the 
more  complicated  techniques.  Some  of  them  can  do 
the  simpler  work  in  preparing  food  for  cooking,  such 
as  skinning  bananas,  grating  cocoanuts,  or  scraping 
taro.  A  few  of  them  can  weave  the  simple  carrying 
basket.  But  now  they  must  learn  to  weave  all  their 
own  baskets  for  carrying  supplies  j  learn  to  select  taro 
leaves  of  the  right  age  for  cooking,  to  dig  only  mature 
taro.  In  the  cook-house  they  learn  to  make  palusami, 
to  grate  the  cocoanut  meat,  season  it  with  hot  stones, 
mix  it  with  sea  water  and  strain  out  the  husks,  pour 
this  milky  mixture  into  a  properly  made  little  container 
of  taro  leaves  from  which  the  aromatic  stem  has  been 
scorched  off,  wrap  these  In  a  breadfruit  leaf  and  fasten 
the  stem  tightly  to  make  a  durable  cooking  jacket. 
They  must  learn  to  lace  a  large  fish  into  a  palm  leaf, 
or  roll  a  bundle  of  small  fish  in  a  breadfruit  leaf  j  to 
select  the  right  kind  of  leaves  for  stuffing  a  pig,  to 
judge  when  the  food  in  the  oven  of  small  heated  stones 
is  thoroughly  baked.  Theoretically  the  bulk  of  the 
cooking  is  done  by  the  boys  and  where  a  girl  has  to 
do  the  heavier  work,  it   is  a  matter   for  comment: 

[29] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

"Poor  Losa,  there  are  no  boys  in  her  house  and  always 
she  must  make  the  oven."  But  the  girls  always  help 
and  often  do  a  great  part  of  the  work. 

Once  they  are  regarded  as  individuals  who  can  de- 
vote a  long  period  of  time  to  some  consecutive  activity, 
girls  are  sent  on  long  fishing  expeditions.  .  They  learn 
to  weave  fish  baskets,  to  gather  and  arrange  the  bundles 
of  fagots  used  in  torch-light  fishing,  to  tickle  a  devil 
fish  until  it  comes  out  of  its  hole  and  climbs  obediently 
upon  the  waiting  stick,  appropriately  dubbed  a  "come 
hither  stick" j  to  string  the  great  rose-coloured  jelly- 
fish, loley  a  name  which  Samoan  children  give  to  candy 
also,  on  a  long  string  of  hibiscus  bark,  tipped  with  a 
palm  leaf  rib  for'  a  needle  j  to  know  good  fish  from 
bad  fish,  fish  that  are  in  season  from  fish  which  are 
dangerous  at  some  particular  time  of  the  yearj  and 
never  to  take  two  octopuses,  found  paired  on  a  rock, 
lest  bad  luck  come  upon  the  witless  fisher. 

Before  this  time  their  knowledge  of  plants  and  trees 
is  mainly  a  play  one,  the  pandanus  provides  them  with 
seeds  for  necklaces,  the  palm  tree  with  leaves  to  weave 
balls  J  the  banana  tree  gives  leaves  for  umbrellas  and 
half  a  leaf  to  shred  into  a  stringy  "choker"  j  cocoanut 
shells  cut  in  half,  with  cinet  strings  attached,  make  a 
species  of  stilt  j  the  blossoms  of  the  Pua  tree  can  be 
sewed  into  beautiful  necklaces.  Now  they  must  learn 
to  recognise  these  trees  and  plants  for  more  serious 
purposes  j  they  must  learn  when  the  pandanus  leaves 
are  ready  for  the  cutting  and  how  to  cut  the  long  leaves 

[30] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

with  one  sure  quick  stroke  j  they  must  distinguish  be- 
tween the  three  kinds  of  pandanus  used  for  different 
grades  of  mats.  The  pretty  orange  seeds  which  made 
such  attractive  and  also  edible  necklaces  must  now  be 
gathered  as  paint  brushes  for  ornamenting  bark  cloth. 
Banana  leaves  are  gathered  to  protect  the  woven  plat- 
ters, to  wrap  up  puddings  for  the  oven,  to  bank  the 
steaming  oven  full  of  food.  Banana,  bark  must  be 
stripped  at  just  the  right  point  to  yield  the  even,  pliant, 
black  strips,  needed  to  ornament  mats  and  baskets. 
Bananas  themselves  must  be  distinguished  as  to  those 
which  are  ripe  for  burying,  or  the  golden  curved  banana 
ready  for  eating,  or  bananas  ready  to  be  sun-dried  for 
making  fruit-cake  rolls.  Hibiscus  bark  can  no  longer 
be  torn  off  at  random  to  give  a  raffia-like  string  for  a 
handful  of  shells j  long  journeys  must  be  made  inland 
to  si^ect  bark  of  the  right  quality  for  use  in  weaving. 
\.^ln  the  house  the  girPs  principal  task  is  to  learn  to 
weave.  She  has  to  master  several  different  techniques. 
First,  she  learns  to  weave  palm  branches  where  the 
central  rib  of  the  leaf  serves  as  a  rim  to  her  basket  or 
an  edge  to  her  mat  and  where  the  leaflets  are  already 
arranged  for  weaving.  From  palm  leaves  she  first 
learns  to  weave  a  carrying  basket,  made  of  half  a  leaf, 
by  plaiting  the  leaflets  together  and  curving  the  rib 
into  a  rim.  Then  she  learns  to  weave  the  Venetian 
blinds  which  hang  between  the  house  posts,  by  laying 
one-half  leaf  upon  another  and  plaiting  the  leaflets 
together.     More  difficult  are  the  floor  mats,  woven  of 

[31] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

four  great  palm  leaves,  and  the  food  platters  with  their 
intricate  designs.  There  are  also  fans  to  make,  simple 
two-strand  weaves  which  she  learns  to  make  quite  well, 
more  elaborate  twined  ones  which  are  the  prerogative 
of  older  and  more  skilled  weavers.  Usually  some 
older  woman  in  the  household  trains  a  girl  to  weave 
and  sees  to  it  that  she  makes  at  least  one  of  each  kind 
of  article,  but  she  is  only  called  upon  to  produce  in 
quantity  the  simpler  things,  like  the  Venetian  blinds. 
From  the  pandanus  she  learns  to  weave  the  common 
floor  mats,  one  or  two  types  of  the  more  elaborate  bed 
mats,  and  then,  when  she  is  thirteen  or  fourteen,  she 
begins  her  first  fine  mat.  The  fine  mat  represents  the 
high  point  of  Samoan  weaving  virtuosity.  Woven  of 
the  finest  quality  of  pandanus  which  has  been  soaked 
and  baked  and  scraped  to  a  golden  whiteness  and  paper- 
like thinness,  of  strands  a  sixteenth  of  an  inch  in  width, 
these  mats  take  a  year  or  two  years  to  weave  and  are 
as  soft  and  pliable  as  linen.  They  form  the  unit  of 
value,  and  must  always  be  included  in  the  dowry  of 
the  bride.  Girls  seldom  finish  a  fine  mat  until  they 
are  nineteen  or  twenty,  but  the  mat  has  been  started, 
and,  wrapped  up  in  a  coarser  one,  it  rests  among  the 
rafters,  a  testimony  to  the  girPs  industry  and  manual 
skill.  She  learns  the  rudiments  of  bark  cloth  making  j 
she  can  select  and  cut  the  paper  mulberry  wands,  peel 
off  the  bark,  beat  it  after  it  has  been  scraped  by  more 
expert  hands.    The  patterning  of  the  cloth  with  a  pat- 

[32] 


i 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

tern  board  or  by  free  hand  drawing  is  left  for  the  more 
experienced  adult. 
.  Throughout  this  more  or  less  systematic  period  of 
education,  the  girls  maintain  a  very  nice  balance  be- 
tween  a   reputation   for   the   necessary   minimum    of 
knowledge  and  a  virtuosity  which  would  make   too        . 
heavy  demands.     A  girl's   chances   of   marriage   are  '^^yyj.^ 
badly  damaged  if  it  gets  about  the  village  that  she  is  ^ 
lazy  and  inept  in  domestic  tasks.     But  after  these  first 
stages  have  been  completed  the  girl  marks  time  tech- 
nically for  three  or  four  years.     She  does  the  routine 
weaving,  especially  of  the  Venetian  blinds  and  carrying 
baskets.     She  helps  with  the  plantation  work  and  the 
cooking,  she  weaves  a  very  little  on  her  fine  mat.    But 
she  thrusts  virtuosity  away  from  her  as  she  thrusts 
away  every  other  sort  of  responsibility  with  the  in-    , 
variable  comment,  "Laititi  a'u"  ("I  am  but  young"). 
All  of  her  interest  is  expended  on  clandestine  sex  ad-  .^ 
ventures,  and  she  is  content  to  do  routine  tasks  as,  to  a 
certain  extent,  her  brother  is  also. 

But  the  seventeen-year-old  boy  is  not  left  passively 
to  his  own  devices.  ,  He  has  learned  the  rudiments  of 
fishing,  he  can  take  a  dug-out  canoe  over  the  reef 
safely,  or  manage  the  stern  paddle  in  a  bonito  boat. 
He  can  plant  taro  or  transplant  cocoanut,  husk  cocoa- 
nuts  on  a  stake  and  cut  the  meat  out  with  one  deft 
quick  turn  of  the  knife.  Now  at  seventeen  or  eighteen 
he  is  thrust  into  the  Aumaga,  the  society  of  the  young 

[33] 


/ 


V 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

men  and  the  older  men  without  titles,  the  group  that 
is  called,  not  in  euphuism  but  in  sober  fact,  "the 
strength  of  the  village."  Here  he  is  badgered  into 
efficiency  by  rivalry,  precept  and  example.  The  older 
chiefs  who  supervise  the  activities  of  the  Aumaga  gaze 
equally  sternly  upon  any  backslidings  and  upon  any 
undue  precocity.  The  prestige  of  his  group  is  ever 
being  called  into  account  by  the  Aumaga  of  the  neigh- 
bouring villages.  His  fellows  ridicule  and  persecute 
the  boy  who  fails  to  appear  when  any  group  activity  is 
on  foot,  whether  work  for  the  village  on  the  planta- 
tions, or  fishing,  or  cooking  for  the  chiefs,  or  play  in 
the  form  of  a  ceremonial  call  upon  some  visiting 
maiden.  Furthermore,  the  youth  is  given  much  more 
stimulus  to  learn  and  also  a  greater  variety  of  occupa- 
tions are  open  to  him.  There  is  no  specialisation  among 
women,  except  in  medicine  and  mid-wifery,  both  the 
prerogatives  of  very  old  women  who  teach  their  arts 
to  their  middle-aged  daughters  and  nieces.  The  only 
other  vocation  is  that  of  the  wife  of  an  official  orator/ 
and  no  girl  will  prepare  herself  for  this  one  type  of 
marriage  which  demands  special  knowledge,  for  she 
has  no  guarantee  that  she  will  marry  a  man  of  this 
class. 

For  the  boy  it  is  different.  He  hopes  that  some  day 
he  will  hold  a  matal  name,  a  name  which  will  make 
him  a  member  of  the  FonOy  the  assembly  of  headmen, 
which  will  give  him  a  right  to  drink  kava  with  chiefs, 
to  work  with  chiefs  rather  than  with  the  young  men, 

[34] 


/ 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

to  sit  inside  the  house,  even  though  his  new  title  is 
only  of  "between  the  posts"  rank,  and  not  of  enough 
importance  to  give  him  a  right  to  a  post  for  his  back. 
But  very  seldom  is  he  absolutely  assured  of  getting 
such  a  name.  Each  family  hold  several  of  these  titles 
which  they  confer  upon  the  most  promising  youths  in 
the  whole  family  connection.  He  has  many  rivals. 
They  also  are  in  the  Aumaga.  He  must  always  pit 
himself  against  them  in  the  group  activities.  There 
are  also  several  types  of  activities  in  one  of  which  he 
must  specialise.  He  must  become  a  house-builder,  a 
fisherman,  an  orator  or  a  wood  carver.  Proficiency  in 
some  technique  must  set  him  off  a  little  from  his  fel- 
lows. *  Fishing  prowess  means  immediate  rewards  in 
the  shape  of  food  gifts  to  offer  to  his  sweetheart;  with- 
out such  gifts  his  advances  will  be  scorned.  Skill  in 
house-building  means  wealth  and  status,  for  a  young 
man  who  is  a  skilled  carpenter  must  be  treated  as  cour- 
teously as  a  chief  and  addressed  with  the  chief's  lan- 
guage, the  elaborate  set  of  honorific  words  used  to 
people  of  rank.  And  with  this  goes  the  continual  de-  ■ 
mand  that  he  should  not  be  too  efficient,  too  outstand- 
ing, too  precocious.  He  must  never  excel  his  fellows^ 
by  more  than  a  little.  He  must  neither  arouse  their 
hatred  nor  the  disapproval  of  his  elders  who  are  far 
readier  to  encourage  and  excuse  the  laggard  than  to 
condone  precocity.  And  at  the  same  time  he  shares  his 
sister's  reluctance  to  accept  responsibility,  and  if  he 
should  excel  gently,  not  too  obviously,  he  has  good 

[35] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

chances  of  being  made  a  chief.  If  he  is  sufficiently 
talented,  the  Fono  itself  may  deliberate,  search  out  a 
Vacant  title  to  confer  upon  him  and  call  him  in  that 
he  may  sit  with  the  old  men  and  learn  wisdom.  And 
yet  so  well  recognised  is  the  unwillingness  of  the  young 
men  to  respond  to  this  honour,  that  the  provision  is 
always  made,  "And  if  the  young  man  runs  away,  then 
never  shall  he  be  made  a  chief,  but  always  he  must  sit 
outside  the  house  with  the  young  men,  preparing  and 
serving  the  food  of  the  matais  with  whom  he  may 
not  sit  in  the  FonoJ*'  Still  more  pertinent  are  the 
chances  of  his  relationship  group  bestowing  a  matai 
name  upon  the  gifted  young  man.  And  a  matai  he 
wishes  to  be,  some  day,  some  far-off  day  when  his 
limbs  have  lost  a  little  of  their  suppleness  and  his  heart 
the  love  of  fun  and  of  dancing.  As  one  chief  of 
twenty-seven  told  me:  "I  have  been  a  chief  only  four 
years  and  look,  my  hair  is  grey,  although  in  Samoa  grey 
hair  comes  very  slowly,  not  in  youth,  as  it  comes  to 
the  white  man.  But  always,  I  must  act  as  if  I  were 
old.  I  must  walk  gravely  and  with  a  measured  step. 
I  may  not  dance  except  upon  most  solemn  occasions, 
neither  may  I  play  games  with  the  young  men.  Old 
men  of  sixty  are  my  companions  and  watch  my  every 
word,  lest  I  make  a  mistake.  Thirty-one  people  live 
in  my  household.  For  them  I  must  plan,  I  must  find 
them  food  and  clothing,  settle  their  disputes,  arrange 
their  marriages.  There  is  no  one  in  my  whole  family 
who  dares  to  scold  me  or  even  to  address  me  familiarly 

[36] 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SAMOAN  CHILD 

by  my  first  name.  It  is  hard  to  be  so  young  and  yet 
to  be  a  chief."  And  the  old  men  shake  their  heads 
and  agree  that  it  is  unseemly  for  one  to  be  a  chief  so 
young. 

■  The  operation  of  natural  ambition  is  further  vitiated 
by  the  fact  that  the  young  man  who  is  made  a  matai 
will  not  be  the  greatest  among  his  former  associates, 
but  the  youngest  and  greenest  member  of  the  Fono. 
And  no  longer  may  he  associate  familiarly  with  his  old 
companions  J  a  matai  must  associate  only  with  maiais,) 
must  work  beside  them  in  the  bush  and  sit  and  tall 
quietly  with  them  in  the  evening. 

And  so  the  boy  is  faced  by  a  far  more  difficult  di- 
lemma than  the  girl.  He  dislikes  responsibility,  but 
he  wishes  to  excel  in  his  group  j  skill  will  hasten  the 
day  when  he  is  made  a  chief,  yet  he  receives  censure 
and  ridicule  if  he  slackens  his  efforts;  but  he  will  be 
scolded  if  he  proceeds  too  rapidly;  yet  if  he  would 
win  a  sweetheart,  he  must  have  prestige  among  hiS; 
fellows.  And  conversely,  his  social  prestige  is  in- 
creased by  his  amorous  exploits.  v^ 
^J  So  while  the  girl  rests  upon  her  "pass"  proficiency,  \  ^ 
the  boy  is  spurred  to  greater  efforts.  A  boy  is  shy  of  / 
a  girl  who  does  not  have  these  proofs  of  efficiency  and 
is  known  to  be  stupid  and  unskilled;  he  is  afraid  he 
may  come  to  want  to  marry  her.  Marrying  a  girl  with- 
out proficiency  would  be  a  most  imprudent  step  and 
involve  an  endless  amount  of  wrangling  with  his  fam- 
ily.   So  the  girl  who  is  notoriously  inept  must  take  her 

[37] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

lovers  from  among  the  casual,  the  jaded,  and  the  mar- 
ried who  are  no  longer  afraid  that  their  senses  will  be- 
trp,y  them  into  an  imprudent  marriage. 
C  But  the  seventeen-year-old  girl  does  not  wish  to 
niarry — not  yet.  It  is  better  to  live  as  a  girl  with  no 
b.  responsibility,  and  a  rich  variety  of  emotional  experi- 
ence. This  is  the  best  period  of  her  lifeJ  There  are 
as  many  beneath  her  whom  she  may  bully  as  there  are 
others  above  her  to  tyrannise  over  her.  What  she  loses 
in  prestige,  she  gains  in  freedom.  She  has  very  little 
baby-tending  to  do.  Her  eyes  do  not  ache  from  weav- 
ing nor  does  her  back  break  from  bending  all  day  over 
the  tapa  board.  The  long  expeditions  after  fish  and 
food  and  weaving  materials  give  ample  opportunities 
for  rendezvous.  Proficiency  would  mean  more  work,  • 
more  confining  work,  and  earlier  marriage,  and  mar- 

y    riage  is  the  inevitable  to  be  deferred  as  long  as  possible.  . 

J 


[38] 


IV 

THE    SAMOAN    HOUSEHOLD 

A  SAMOAN  yillage  is-made  up  of  some  thirty  to  forty 
households,  each  of  which  is  presided  over  by  a  head- 
man called  a  ly^ai-  These  headmen  hold  either 
chiefly  titles  or  the  titles  of  talking  chiefs,  who  are 
the  official  orators,  spokesmen  and  ambassadors  of 
chiefs.  In  a  formal  village  assembly  each  f?i'atai  has 
his  place,  and  represents  and  is  responsible  for  all  the 
members  of  his  household.  These  households  include 
all  the  individuals  who  live  for  any  length  of  time 
under  the  authority  and  protection  of  a  common 
Tnatai.  Their  composition  varies  from  the  biological 
family  consisting  of  parents  and  children  only,  to 
households  of  fifteen  and  twenty  people  who  are  all 
related  to  the  matai  or  to  his  wife  by  blood,  marriage 
or  adoption,  but  who  often  have  no  close  relationship 
to  each  other.  The  adopted  members  of  a  household 
are  usually  but  not  necessarily  distant  relatives. 

Widows  and  widowers,  especially  when  they  are 
childless,  usually  return  to  their  blood  relatives,  but  a 
married  couple  may  live  with  the  relatives  of  either  one. 
Such  a  household  is  not  necessarily  a  close  residential 
unit,  but  may  be  scattered  over  the  village  in  three  or 

[39] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

four  houses.  No  one  living  permanently  in  another 
village  is  counted  as  a  member  of  the  household,  which 
is  strictly  a  local  unit.  Economically,  the  household  is 
also  a  unit,  for  all  work  upon  the  plantations  under  the 
supervision  of  the  mata±  who  jn  turn  parcels  out  to 
them  food  and  other  necessities. 

Within  the  household,, age  rather  than  relationship 
gives  disciplinary  authority.  The  matai  exercises  nomi- 
nal and  usually  real  authority  over  every  individual 
under  his  protection,  even  over  his  father  and  mother,* 
This  control  is,  of  course,  modified  by  personality  dif- 
ferences, always  carefully  tempered,-'  however,  by  a 
ceremonious  acknowledgment  of  his  position.  The 
newest  baby  born  into  such  a  household  is  subject  to 
every  individual  in  it,  and  his  position  improves  no 
whit  with  age  until  a  younger  child  appears  upon  the 
scene.  But  in  most  households  the  position  of  youngest 
is  a  highly  temporary  one.  Nieces  and  nephews  or 
destitute  young  cousins  come  to  swell  the  ranks  of  the 
household  and  at  adolescence  a  girl  stands  virtually  in 
the  middle  v/ith  as  many  individuals  who  must  obey 
her  as  there  are  persons  to  whom  she  owes  obedience. 
Where  increased  efficiency  and  increased  self-conscious- 
ness would  perhaps  have  made  her  obstreperous  and 
restless  in  a  differently  organised  family,  here  she  has 
ample  outlet  for  a  growing  sense  of  authority. 

This  development  is  perfectly  regular.  A  girPs 
marriage  makes  a  minimum,  of  difference  in  this  re- 
spect, except  in  so  far  as  her  own  children  increase 

[40] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

most  pertinently  the  supply  of  agreeably  docile  subor- 
dinates. But  the  girls  who  remain  unmarried  even  be- 
yond their  early  twenties  are  in  nowise  less  highly  re- 
garded or  less  responsible  than  their  married  sisters. 
This  tendency  to  make  the  classifying  principle  age, 
rather  than  married  state,  is  reinforced  outside  the  home 
by  the  fact  that  the  wives  of  untitled  men  and  all  un- 
married girls  past  puberty  are  classed  together  in  the 
ceremonial  organisation  of  the  village. 

Relatives  in  other  households  also  play  a  role  in  the 
children's  lives.  ..Any  older  relative  has  a  right  to  de- 
mand personal  service  from  younger  relatives,  a  right  to 
criticise  their  conduct  and  to  interfere  in  their  affairs. 
Thus  a  little  girl  may  escape  alone  down  to  the  beach 
to  bathe  only  to  be  met  by  an  older  cousin  who  sets 
her  washing  or  caring  for  a  baby  or  to  fetch  some 
cocoanut  to  scrub  the  clothes.  '  So  closely  is  the  dail^ 
life  bound  up  with  this  universal  servitude  and  so  nu- 
merous are  the  acknowledged  relationships  in  the  name 
of  which  service  can  be  exacted,  that  for  the  children 
an  hour's  escape  from  surveillance  is  almost  impossible.^ 

This  loose  but  demanding  relationship  group  has  its 
compensations  also.  Within  it  a  child  of  three  can 
wander  safely  and  come  to  no  harm,  can  be  sure  of 
finding  food  and  drink,  a  sheet  to  wrap  herself  up  in 
for  a  nap,  a  kind  hand  to  dry  casual  tears  and  bind  up 
her  wounds.  Any  small  children  who  are  missing 
when  night  falls,  are  simply  "sought  among  their  kins- 
folk," and  a  baby  whose  mother  has  gone  inland  to 

[41] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

work  on  the  plantation  is  passed  from  hand  to  hand 
for  the  length  of  the  village. 

\  The  ranking  by  age  is  disturbed  in  only  a  few  cases. 
fin  each  village  one  or  two  high  chiefs  have  the  heredi- 
tary right  to  name  some  girl  of  their  household  as  its 
taufOy  the  ceremonial  princess  of  the  house.  The  girl 
who  at  fifteen  or  sixteen  is  made  a  taufo  is  snatched 
from  her  age  group  and  sometimes  from  her  immedi- 
ate family  also  and  surrounded  by  a  glare  of  prestige] 
The  older  women  of  the  village  accord  her  courtesy 
titles,  her  immediate  family  often  exploits  her  posi- 
tion for  their  personal  ends  and  in  return  show  great 
consideration  for  her  wishes.  But  as  there  are  only 
two  or  three  tau-pos  in  a  village,  their  unique  position 
serves  to  emphasise  rather  than  to  disprove  the  gen- 
eral status  of  young  girls. 

Coupled  with  this  enormous  diffusion  of  authority 
goes  a  fear  of  overstraining  the  relationship  bond, 
which  expresses  itself  in  an  added  respect  for  person- 
ality. The  very  number  of  her  captors  is  the  girPs 
protection,  for  does  one  press  her  too  far,  she  has  but 
to  change  her  residence  to  the  home  of  some  more 
complacent  relative.  It  is  possible  to  classify  the  dif- 
ferent households  open  to  her  as  those  with  hardest 
work,  least  chaperonage,  least  scolding,  largest  or  least 
number  of  contemporaries,  fewest  babies,  best  food, 
etc.  Few  children  live  continuously  in  one  household, 
but  are  always  testing  out  other  possible  residences. 
And  this  can  be  done  under  the  guise  of  visits  and  with 

[42] 


JHE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

no  suggestion  of  truancy.  But  the  minute  that  the 
mildest  annoyance  grows  up  at  home,  the  possibility  of 
flight  moderates  the  discipline  and  alleviates  the  child's 
sense  of  dependency.  No  Samoan  child,  except  the 
tawpOy  or  the  thoroughly  delinquent,  ever  has  to  deal 
with  a  feeling  of  being  trapped.  There  are  always 
relatives- to  whom  one  can  flee.  This  is  the  invariable 
answer  which  a  Samoan  gives  when  some  familial  im- 
passe is  laid  before  him.  "But  she  will  go  to  some 
other  relative."  And  theoretically  the  supply  of  rela- 
tives is  inexhaustible.  Unless  the  vagrant  has  com- 
mitted some  very  serious  offence  like  incest,  it  is  only 
necessary  formally  to  depart  from  the  bosom  of  one's 
household.  A  girl  whose  father  has  beaten  her  over 
severely  in  the  morning  will  be  found  living  in  haughty 
sanctuary,  two  hundred  feet  away,  in  a  different  house- 
hold. So  cherished  is  this  system  of  consanguineous 
refuge,  that  an  untitled  man  or  a  man  of  lesser  rank 
wuITeard  the  nobler  relative  who  comes  to  demand  a 
runaway  child.  With  great  politeness  and  endless  ex- 
pressions of  conciliation,  he  will  beg  his  noble  chief  to 
return  to  his  noble  home  and  remain  there  quietly  until 
his  noble  anger  is  healed  against  his  noble  child. 

The  most  important  relationships  *  within  a  Samoan  -c^ 
household  which  influence  the  lives  of  the  young  peo- 
ple are  the  relationships  between  the  boys  and  girls 
who  call  each  other  "brother"  and  "sister,"  whether 
by  blood,  marriage  or  adoption,  and  the  relationship 
betweer  younger  and  older  relatives.    The  stress  upon 

*  See  /  ppendix,  page  249. 

[43] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

the  sex  difference  between  contemporaries  and  the  em- 
phasis on  relative  age  are  amply  explained  by  the  con- 
ditions of  family  life.  Relatives  of  opposite  sex  have 
a  most  rigid_  code^o^  etiguettejir^scribed  for  all  their 
contacts  with  each  other.  After  they  have  reached 
years  of  discretion,  nine  or  ten  years  of  age  in  this 
case,  they  may  not  touch  each  other,  sit  close  together, 
eat  together,  address  each  other  familiarly,  or  mention 
any  salacious  matter  in  each  other's  presence.  They 
may  not  remain  in  any  house,  except  their  own,  to- 
gether, unless  half  the  village  is  gathered  there.  They 
may  not  walk  together,  use  each  other's  possessions, 
dance  on  the  same  floor,  or  take  part  in  any  of  the  same 
small  group  activities.  This  strict ^atvoidance  applies  to 
all  individuals  of  the  opposite  sex  within  five  years 
above  or  below  one's  own  age  with  whom  one  was 
reared  or  to  whom  one  acknowledges  relationship  by 
blood  or  marriage.  The  conformance  to  this  brother 
and  sister  taboo  begins  when  the  younger  of  the  two 
children  feels  "ashamed"  at  the  elder's  touch  and  con- 
tinues until  old  age  when  the  decrepit,  toothless  pair 
of  old  siblings  may  again  sit  on  the  same  mat  and  not 
feel  ashamed. 

Teiy  the  word  for  younger  relative,  stresses  the  other 
most  emotionally  charged  relationship.  The  first  ma- 
ternal enthusiasm  of  a  girl  is  never  expended  upon  her 
own  children  but  upon  some  younger  relative.  And  it 
is  the  girls  and  women  who  use  this  term  most,  con- 
tinuing to  cherish  it  after  they  and  the  younger  ones 

[44] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

to  whom  It  is  applied  are  full  grown.  The  younger 
child  in  turn  expends  its  enthusiasm  upon  a  still 
younger  one  without  manifesting  any  excessive  affec- 
tion for  the  fostering  elders. 

The  word  aiga  is  used  roughly  to  cover  all  relation- 
ships by  blood,  marriage  and  adoption,  :ind  the  emo- 
tional tone  seems  to  be  the  same  in  each  case.  Rela- 
tionship by  marriage  is  counted  only  as  long  as  an 
actual  marri.ige  connects  two  kinship  groups.  If  the 
marriage  is  broken  in  any  way,  by  desertion,  divorce, 
or  death,  the  relationship  is  dissolved  and  members  of 
the  two  families  are  free  to  marry  each  other.  If  the 
marriage  left  any  children,  a  reciprocal  relationship 
exists  between  the  two  households  as  long  as  the  child 
lives,  for  the  mother's  family  will  always  have  to  con- 
tribute one  kind  of  property,  the  father's  family  an- 
other, for  occasions  when  property  must  be  given  away 
in  the  name  of  the  child. 

A  relative  is  regarded  as  some  one  upon  whom  one 
has  a  multitude  of  claims  and  to  whom  one  owes  a  mul-  ^ 
titude  of  obligations.   From  a  relative  one  may  demand 
food,  clothing,  and  shelter,  or  assistance  in  a  feud.   Re- 
fusal of  such  a  demand  brands  one  as  stingy  and  lack- 
ing in  human  kindness,  the  virtue  most  esteemed  among  ^ 
_the  Samoans.     No  definite  repayment  Is  made  at  the 
time  such  services  are  given,  except  In  the  case  of  the 
distribution  of  food  to  all  those  who  share  In  a  family 
enterprise.    But  careful  count  of  the  value  of  the  prop-    / 
erty  given  and  of  the  service  rendered  Is  kept  and  a 

[45] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

return  gift  demanded  at  the  earliest  opportunity. 
Nevertheless,  in  native  theory  the  two  acts  are  sepa- 
rate, each  one  in  turn  becoming  a  "beggar,"  a  pen- 
sioner upon  another's  bounty.  In  olden  times,  the  beg- 
gar sometimes  wore  a  special  girdle  which  delicately 
hinted  at  the  cause  of  his  visit.  One  old  chief  gave 
\/  me  a  graphic  descriptioivpf  the  ^behaviour  of  some  one 
who  had  come  to  ask  a  favour  of  a  relative.  "He  will 
come  early  in  the  morning  and  enter  quietly,  sitting 
down  in  the  very  back  of  the  house,  in  the  place  of 
least  honour.  You  will  say  to  him,  ^So  you  have  come, 
be  welcome!'  and  he  will  answer,  *I  have  come  indeed, 
saving  your  noble  presence.'  Then  you  will  say,  ^Are 
you  thirsty?  Alas  for  your  coming,  there  is  little  that 
is  good  within  the  house.'  And  he  will  answer,  *Let 
■  it  rest,  thank  you,  for  indeed  I  am  not  hungry  nor 
would  I  drink.'  And  he  will  sit  and  you  will  sit  all 
day  long  and  no  mention  is  made  of  the  purpose  of 
his  coming.  All  day  he  will  sit  and  brush  the  ashes 
out  of  the  hearth,  performing  this  menial  and  dirty 
task  with  very  great  care  and  attention.  If  some  one 
must  go  inland  to  the  plantation  to  fetch  food,  he  is 
the  first  to  offer  to  go.  If  some  one  must  go  fishing 
to  fill  out  the  crew  of  a  canoe,  surely  he  is  delighted 
to  go,  even  though  the  sun  is  hot  and  his  journey 
hither  has  been  long.  And  all  day  you  sit  and  won- 
der, *What  can  it  be  that  he  has  come  for?  Is  it  that 
largest  pig  that  he  wants,  of  has  he  heard  perhaps  that 
my  daughter  has  just  finished  a  large  and  beautiful 

[46] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

piece  of  tapa?  Would  it  perhaps  be  well  to  send  that 
tapa,  as  I  had  perhaps  planned,  as  a  present  to  my  talk- 
ing chief,  to  send  it  now,  so  that  I  may  refuse  him  with 
all  good  faith?'  And  he  sits  and  studies  your  counte- 
nance and  wonders  if  you  will  be  favourable  to  his  re- 
quest. He  plays  with  the  children  but  refuses  the  neck- 
lace of  flowers  which  they  have  woven  for  him  and 
gives  it  instead  to  your  daughter.  Finally  night  comes. 
It  is  time  to  sleep  and  still  he  has  not  spoken.  So 
finally  you  say  to  him,  *Lo,  I  would  sleep.  Will  you 
sleep  also  or  will  you  be  returning  whence  you  have 
come?'  And  only  then  will  he  speak  and  tell  you  the 
desire  in  his  heart." 

So  the  intrigue,  the  needs,  the  obligations  of  the^ 
larger  relationship  group  which  threads  its  carefully 
remembered  way  in  and  out  of  many  houses  and  many      "^ 
villages,  cuts  across  the  life  of  the  household.     One 
day  it  is  the  wife's  relatives  who  come  to  spend  a 
month  or  borrow  a  fine  mat  j  the  next  day  it  is  the  hus- 
band's j  the  third,  a  niece  who  is  a  valued  worker  in 
the  household  may  be  called  home  by  the  illness  of 
her  father.    Very  seldom  do  all  of  even  the  small  chil-^n 
dren  of  a  biological  family  live  in  one  household  and  jT 
while  the  claims  of  the  household  are  paramount,  in 
the  routine  of  everyday  life,  illness  or  need  on  the  part 
of  the  closer  relative  in  another  household  will  call  the 
wanderers  home  again. 

Obligations  either  to  give  general  assistance  or  to 
give  specific  traditionally  required  service,  as  in  a  mar- 

[47] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

riage  or  at  a  birth,  follow  relationship  lines,  not  house- 
hold lines.  But  a  marriage  of  many  years'  duration 
binds  the  relationship  groups  of  husband  and  wife  so 
closely  together  that  to  all  appearances  it  is  the  house- 
hold unit  which  gives  aid  and  accede^  to  a  request 
brought  by  the  relative  of  either  one.  \Only  in  fami- 
lies of  high  rank  where  the  distaff  side  has  priority 
in  decisions  and  in  furnishing  the  tau-pOy  the  princess 
of  the  house,  and  the  male  line  priority  in  holding  the 
title,  does  the  actual  blood  relationship  continue  to  be 
a  matter  of  great  practical  importance  j  and  this  impor- 
tance is  lost  in  the  looser  household  group  constituted 
as  it  is  by  the  three  principles  of  blood,  marriage  and 
adoption,  and  bound  together  by  common  ties  of  every- 
^  day  living  and  mutual  economic  dependence,  j 

The  matai  of  a  household  is  theoretically  exempt 
from  the  performance  of  small  domestic  tasks,  but  he 
is  seldom  actually  so  except  in  the  case  of  a  chief  of 
high  rank.  However,  the  leading  role  is  always  ac- 
corded to  him  in  any  industrial  pursuit  j  he  dresses  the 
/  pig  for  the  feasts  and  cuts  up  the  cocoanuts  which  the 
^,  boys  and  women  have  gathered.  The  family  cooking 
is  done  by  the  men  and  women  both,  but  the  bulk  of 
the  work  falls  upon  the  boys  and  young  men.  The  old 
men  spin  the  cocoanut  fibre,  and  braid  it  into  the  native 
cord  which  is  used  for  fish  lines,  fish  nets,  to  sew  canoe 
parts  together  and  to  bind  all  the  different  parts  of  a 
house  in  place.  With  the  old  women  who  do  the  bulk 
of  the  weaving  and  making  of  bark  cloth,  they  super- 

[48] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

vise  the  younger  children  who  remain  at  home.  The 
heavy  routine  agricultural  work  falls  upon  the  women 
who  are  responsible  for  the  weeding,  transplanting, 
gathering  and  transportation  of  the  food,  and  the  gath- 
ering of  the  paper  mulberry  wands  from  which  bark 
will  be  peeled  for  making  tapa,  of  the  hibiscus  bark 
and  pandanus  leaves  for  weaving  mats.  The  older 
girls  and  women  also  do  the  routine  reef  fishing  for 
octopuses,  sea  eggs,  jelly  fish,  crabs,  and  other  small 
fry.  The  younger  girls  carry  the  water,  care  for  the 
lamps  (to-day  except  in  times  of  great  scarcity  when 
the  candle  nut  and  cocoanut  oil  are  resorted  to,  the  na- 
tives use  kerosene  lamps  and  lanterns),  and  sweep  and 
arrange  the  houses.  Tasks  are  all  graduated  with  a 
fair  recognition  of  abilities  which  differ  with  age,  and 
except  in  the  case  of  individuals  of  very  high  rank,  a 
task  is  rejected  because  a  younger  person  has  skill 
enough  to  perform  it,  rather  than  because  it  is  beneath 
an  adult's  dignity. 

Rank  in  the  village  and  rank  In  the  household  reflect 
each  other,  but  village  rank  hardly  affects  the  young 
children.  If  a  girl's  father  is  a  mataiy  the  matai  of  the 
household  in  which  she  lives,  she  has  no  appeal  from 
his  authority.  But  if  some  other  member  of  the  family 
is  the  mataiy  he  and  his  wife  may  protect  her  from  her 
father's  exactions.  In  the  first  case,  disagreement  with 
her  father  means  leaving  the  household  and  going  to 
live  with  other  relatives  j  in  the  second  case  it  may 
mean  only  a  little  internal  friction.    Also  in  the  family 

[49] 


? 


^       COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

of  a  nigh  chief  or  a  high  talking  chief  there  is  more 
emphasis  upon  ceremonial,  more  emphasis  upon  hospi- 
tality. The  children  are  better  bred  and  also  much 
harder  worked.  But  aside  from  the  general  quality  of 
a  household  which  is  dependent  upon  the  rank  of  its 
head,  households  of  very  different  rank  may  seem  very 
similar  to  young  children.  They  are  usually  more  con- 
cerned with  the  temperament  of  those  in  authority  than 
with  their  rank.  An  uncle  in  another  village  who  is 
a  very  high  chief  is  of  much  less  significance  in  a  child's 
life  than  some  old  woman  in  her  own  household  who 
has  a  frightful  temper. 
-^  Nevertheless,  rank  not  of  birth  but  of  title  is  very 
important  in  Samoa.  The  status  of  a  village  depends 
upon  the  rank  of  its  high  chief,  the  prestige  of  a  house- 
hold depends  upon  the  title  of  its  matai.  Titles  are  of 
two  grades,  chiefs  and  talking  chiefs|  each  title  carries 
many  other  duties  and  prerogatives  besides  the  head- 
ship of  a  household.  And  the  Samoans  find  rank  a 
never-failing  source  of  interest.  (Xhey  have  invented 
an  elaborate  courtesy  language  which  must  be  used  to 
people  of  rank  J  complicated  etiquette  surrounds  each 
rank  in  society.  Something  which  concerns  their  elders 
so  nearly  cannot  help  being  indirectlv  reflected  in  the 
lives  of  some  of  the  children.  This  is  particularly  true 
of  the  relationship  of  children  to  each  other  in  house- 
holds which  hold  titles  to  which  some  of  them  will  one 
day  attain.  How  these  far-away  issues  of  adult  life 
effect  the  lives  of  children  and  young  people  can  best 

[50] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

be  understood  by  following  their  influence  in  the  lives 
of  particular  children. 

In  the  household  of  a  high  chief  named  Malae  lived 
two  little  girls,  Meta,  twelve,  and  Timu,  eleven.  Meta 
was  a  self-possessed,  efficient  little  girl.  Malae  had 
taken  her  from  her  mother's  house — her  mother  was 
his  cousin — because  she  showed  unusual  intelligence  and 
precocity.  Timu,  on  the  other  hand,  was  an  abnor- 
mally shy,  backward  child,  below  her  age  group  in  in- 
telligence. But  Meta's  mother  was  only  a  distant 
cousin  of  Malae.  Had  she  not  married  into  a  strange 
village  where  Malae  was  living  temporarily,  Meta 
might  never  have  come  actively  to  the  notice  of  her 
noble  relative.  And  Timu  was  the  only  daughter  of 
Malae's  dead  sister.  Her  father  had  been  a  quarter 
caste  which  served  to  mark  her  off  and  increase  her 
self-consciousness.  Dancing  was  an  agony  to  her.  She 
fled  precipitately  from  an  elder's  admonitory  voice. 
But  Timu  would  be  Malae's  next  taupo,  princess.  She 
was  pretty,  the  principal  recognised  qualification,  and 
she  came  from  the  distafF  side  of  the  house,  the  pre- 
ferred descent  for  a  tatc-po.  So  Meta,  the  more  able 
in  every  way,  was  pushed  to  the  wall,  and  Timu,  mis- 
erable over  the  amount  of  attention  she  received,  was 
dragged  forward.  The  mere  presence  of  another  more 
able  and  enterprising  child  would  probably  have  em- 
phasised Timu's  feeling  of  inferiority,  but  this  pub- 
licity stressed  it  painfully.  Commanded  to  dance  on 
every  occasion,  she  would  pause  whenever  she  caught 

[51] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

an  onlooker's  eye  and  stand  a  moment  wringing  her 
hands  before  going  on  with  the  dance. 

In  another  household,  this  same  title  of  Malae's 
taupo  played  a  different  role.  This  was  in  the  house- 
hold of  Malae's  paternal  aunt  who  lived  with  her  hus- 
band in  Malae's  guest  house  in  his  native  village.  Her 
eldest  daughter,  Pana,  held  the  title  of  tawpo  of  the 
house  of  Malae.  But  Pana  was  twenty-six,  though  still 
unmarried.  She  must  be  wedded  soon  and  then  an- 
other girl  must  be  found  to  hold  the  title.  Timu 
would  still  be  too  young.  Pana  had  three  younger  sis- 
ters who  by  birth  were  supremely  eligible  to  the  title. 
But  Mele,  the  eldest  of  twenty,  was  lame,  and  Pepe 
of  fourteen  was  blind  in  one  eye  and  an  incorrigible 
tomboy.  The  youngest  was  even  younger  than  Timu. 
So  all  three  were  effectually  barred  from  succession. 
This  fact  reacted  favourably  upon  the  position  of  Filita. 
She  was  a  seventeen-year-old  niece  of  the  father  of  the 
other  children  with  no  possible  claims  on  a  title  in  the 
house  of  Malae,  but  she  had  lived  with  her  cousins 
since  childhood.  Filita  was  pretty,  efficient,  adequate, 
neither  lame  like  Mele  nor  blind  and  hoydenish  like 
Pepe.  True  she  could  never  hope  to  be  taufo,  but 
neither  could  they,  despite  their  superior  birth,  so 
peace  and  amity  reigned  because  of  her  cousins'  defi- 
ciencies. Still  another  little  girl  came  within  the  circle 
of  influence  of  the  title.  This  was  Pula,  another  little 
cousin  in  a  third  village.  But  her  more  distant  rela- 
tionship and  possible  claims  were  completely  obscured 

t52j 


A  chiefs  daughter  and  the  bfiby  of  the  household  zvhose  \elloz 
hair  will  some  day  make  a  chiefs  headdress 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

by  the  fact  that  she  was  the  only  granddaughter  of  the 
highest  chief  in  her  own  village  and  her  becoming  the 
tawpo  of  that  title  was  inevitable  so  that  her  life  was 
untouched  by  any  other  possibility.  Thus  six  girls  in 
addition  to  the  present  taufOy  were  influenced  for  good 
or  evil  by  the  possibility  of  succession  to  the  title.  But 
as  there  are  seldom  more  than  one  or  two  taupos  in  a 
village,  these  influences  are  still  fairly  circumscribed 
when  compared  with  the  part  which  rank  plays  in  the 
lives  of  boys,  for  there  are  usually  one  or  more  matai 
names  in  every  relationship  group. 

Rivalry  plays  a  much  stronger  part  here.  In  the 
choice  of  the  taufo  and  the  mana'ia  (the  titular  heir- 
apparent)  there  is  a  strong  prejudice  in  favour  of 
blood  relationship  and  also  for  the  choice  of  the  tawpo 
from  the  female  and  the  manaia  from  the  male  line. 
But  in  the  interests  of  efficiency  this  scheme  had  been 
modified,  so  that  most  titles  were  filled  by  the  most 
able  youth  from  the  whole  relationship  and  affinity 
group.  So  it  was  in  Alofi.  Tui,  a  chief  of  importance 
in  the  village,  had  one  son,  an  able  intelligent  boy. 
Tui's  brothers  were  dull  and  inept,  no  fit  successors  to 
the  title.  One  of  them  had  an  ill-favoured  young  son, 
a  stupid,  unattractive  youngster.  There  were  no  other 
males  in  the  near  relationship  group.  It  was  assumed 
that  the  exceedingly  eligible  son  would  succeed  his 
father.  And  then  at  twenty  he  died.  The  little 
nephew  hardly  gave  promise  of  a  satisfactory  develop- 
ment, and  so  Tui  had  his  choice  of  looking  outside  his 

[53] 


f 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

village  or  outside  of  his  near  relationship  group.  Vil- 
lage feeling  runs  high  in  Tui's  village.  Tui's  blood 
relatives  lived  many  villages  away.  They  were  stran- 
gers. If  he  did  not  go  to  them  and  search  for  a  prom- 
ising youth  whom  he  could  train  as  his  successor,  he 
must  either  find  an  eligible  young  husband  for  his 
daughter  or  look  among  his  wife's  people.  Provision- 
ally he  took  this  last  course,  and  his  wife's  brother's  son 
came  to  live  in  his  household.  In  a  year,  his  new 
father  promised  the  boy,  he  might  assume  his  dead 
cousin's  name  if  he  showed  himself  worthy. 

In  the  family  of  high  chief  Fua  a  very  different 
problem  presented  itself.  His  was  the  highest  title  in 
the  village.  He  was  over  sixty  and  the  question  of 
succession  was  a  moot  one.  The  boys  in  his  household 
consisted  of  Tata,  his  eldest  son  who  was  illegitimate, 
Molo  and  Nua,  the  sons  of  his  widowed  sister,  Sisi,  his 
son  by  his  first  legal  wife  (since  divorced  and  re- 
married on  another  island),  and  Tuai,  the  husband  of 
his  niece,  the  sister  of  Molo  and  Nua.  And  in  the 
house  of  Fua's  eldest  brother  lived  his  brother's  daugh- 
ter's son,  Alo,  a  youth  of  great  promise.  Here  then 
were  enough  claimants  to  produce  a  lively  rivalry. 
Tuai  was  the  oldest,  calm,  able,  but  not  sufiiciently 
hopeful  to  be  influenced  in  his  conduct  except  as  it 
made  him  more  ready  to  assert  the  claims  of  superior 
age  over  his  wife's  younger  brothers  whose  claims  were 
better  than  his.  Next  in  age  came  Tata,  the  sour, 
beetle-browed  bastard,  whose  chances  were  negligible 

[54] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

as  long  as  there  were  those  of  legitimate  birth  to  dis- 
pute his  left-handed  claims.  But  Tata  did  not  lose 
hope.  Cautious,  tortuous-minded,  he  watched  and 
waited.  He  was  in  love  with  Lotu,  the  daughter  of  a 
talking  chief  of  only  medium  rank.  For  one  of  Fua's 
sons,  Lotu  would  have  been  a  good  match.  But  as 
Fua's  bastard  who  wished  to  be  chief,  he  must  marry 
high  or  not  at  all.  The  two  nephews,  Molo  and  Nua, 
played  different  hands.  Nua,  the  younger,  went  away  f'^^'T".' 
to  seek  his  fortune  as  a  native  marine  at  the  Naval  Sta-  \^.(c  ^_ 
tion.  This  meant  a  regular  income,  some  knowledge 
of  English,  prestige  of  a  sort.  Molo,  the  elder  brother, 
stayed  at  home  and  made  himself  indispensable.  He 
was  the  tamafafine,  the  child  of  the  distaff  side,  and  it  u^ 
was  his  role  to  take  his  position  for  granted,  the  ta?na- 
jafine  of  the  house  of  Fua,  what  more  could  any  one 
ask  in  the  way  of  immediate  prestige.  As  for  the  fu- 
ture— his  manner  was  perfect.  All  of  these  young 
men,  and  likewise  Alo,  the  great  nephew,  were  mem- 
bers of  the  Aumaga,  grown  up  and  ready  to  assume 
adult  responsibilities.  Sisi,  the  sixteen-year-old  legiti- 
mate son,  was  still  a  boy,  slender,  diffident,  presuming 
far  less  upon  his  position  as  son  and  heir-apparent  than 
did  his  cousin.  He  was  an  attractive,  intelligent  boy. 
If  his  father  lived  until  Sisi  was  twenty-five  or  thirty, 
his  succession  seemed  inevitable.  Even  should  his 
father  die  sooner,  the  title  might  have  been  held  for 
him.  But  in  this  latter  possibility  there  was  one 
danger.     Samala,   his   father's   older  brother,  would 

[55] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

have  a  strong  voice  in  the  choice  of  a  successor  to  the 
title.  And  Alo  was  Samala's  adored  grandson,  the 
son  of  his  favourite  daughter.  Alo  was  the  model 
of  all  that  a  young  man  should  be.  He  eschewed  the 
company  of  women,  stayed  much  at  home  and  rigor- 
ously trained  his  younger  brother  and  sister.  While 
the  other  young  men  played  cricket,  he  sat  at  Samala's 
feet  and  memorised  genealogies.  He  never  forgot 
that  he  was  the  son  of  Safua,  the  house  of  Fua.  More 
able  than  Molo,  his  claim  to  the  title  was  practically 
as  good,  although  within  the  family  group  Molo  as 
the  child  of  the  distaff  side  would  always  outvote  him. 
So  Alo  was  Sisi's  most  dangerous  rival,  provided  his 
father  died  soon.  And  should  Fua  live  twenty  years 
longer,  another  complication  threatened  his  succession. 
Fua  had  but  recently  re-married,  a  woman  of  very  high 
rank  and  great  wealth  who  had  a  five-year-old  illegiti- 
mate son,  Nifo.  Thinking  always  of  this  child,  for  she 
and  Fua  had  no  children,  she  did  all  that  she  could  to 
undermine  Sisi's  position  as  heir-apparent  and  there  was 
every  chance  that  as  her  ascendency  over  Fua  increased 
with  his  advancing  age,  she  might  have  Nifo  named  as 
his  successor.  His  illegitimacy  and  lack  of  blood  tie 
would  be  offset  by  the  fact  that  he  was  child  of  the  dis- 
taff side  in  the  noblest  family  in  the  island  and  would 
inherit  great  wealth  from  his  mother. 

Of  a  different  character  was  the  problem  which  con- 
fronted Sila,  the  stepdaughter  of  Ono,  a  matal  of  low 
rank.    She  was  the  eldest  in  a  family  of  seven  children. 

[56] 


THE  SAMOAN  HOUSEHOLD 

Ono  was  an  old  man,  decrepit  and  ineffective.  Lefu, 
Sila's  mother  and  his  second  wife,  was  worn  out,  weary 
from  bearing  eleven  children.  The  only  adult  males 
in  the  household  were  Laisa,  Ono's  brother,  an  old  man 
like  himself,  and  Laisa's  idle  shiftless  son,  a  man  of 
thirty,  whose  only  interest  in  life  was  love  affairs.  He 
was  unmarried  and  shied  away  from  this  responsibility 
as  from  all  others.  The  sister  next  younger  than  Sila 
was  sixteen.  She  had  left  home  and  lived,  now  here, 
now  there,  among  her  relatives.  Sila  was  twenty-two. 
She  had  been  married  at  sixteen  and  against  her  will 
to  a  man  much  older  than  herself  who  had  beaten  her 
for  her  childish  ways.  After  two  years  of  married  life, 
she  had  run  away  from  her  husband  and  gone  home  to 
live  with  her  parents,  bringing  her  little  two-year-old 
boy,  who  was  now  five  years  old,  with  her.  At  twenty 
she  had  had  a  love  affair  with  a  boy  of  her  own  village, 
and  borne  a  daughter  who  had  lived  only  a  few  months. 
After  her  baby  died  her  lover  had  deserted  her.  Sila 
disliked  matrimony.  She  was  conscientious,  sharp- 
tongued,  industrious.  She  worked  tirelessly  for  her 
child  and  her  small  brothers  and  sisters.  She  did  not 
want  to  marry  again.  But  there  were  three  old  people 
and  six  children  in  her  household  with  only  herself  and 
her  idle  cousin  to  provide  for  them.  And  so  she  said , 
despondently:  "I  think  I  will  get  married  to  that  boy." 
"Which  boy,  Sila?"  I  asked.  "The  father  of  my  baby 
who  is  dead."  "But  I  thought  you  said  you  did  not 
want  him  for  a  husband?"     "No  more  do  I.     But  I 

[57] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

must  find  some  one  to  care  for  my  family."  And  in- 
deed there  was  no  other  way.  Her  stepfather's  title 
was  a  very  low  one.  There  were  no  young  men  within 
the  family  to  succeed  to  it.  Her  lover  was  industrious 
and  of  even  lower  degree.  The  bait  of  the  title  would 
secure  a  worker  for  the  family. 

f"^  And  so  within  many  households  the  shadow  of  nor 
bility  falls  upon  the  children,  sometimes  lightly,  some- 
>/    1    times  heavily,  often  long  before  they  are  old  enough 
\    to  understand  the  meaning  of  these  intrusions  from 
I   the  adult  world. 


[58] 


THE   GIRL  AND   HER  AGE   GROUP 

UNTIL  a  child  is  six  or  seven  at  least  she  associates 
very  little  with  her  contemporaries.  Brothers  and  sis- 
ters and  small  cousins  who  live  in  the  same  household, 
of  course,  frolic  and  play  together,  but  outside  the 
household  each  child  clings  closely  to  its  older  guardian 
and  only  comes  in  contact  with  other  children  in  case 
the  little  nursemaids  are  friends.  But  at  about  seven 
years  of  age,  the  children  begin  to  form  larger  groups, 
a  kind  of  voluntary  association  which  never  exists  in 
later  life,  that  is,  a  group  recruited  from  both  relation- 
ship and  neighbourhood  groups.  These  are  strictly 
divided  along  sex  lines  and  antagonism  between  the 
small  girls  and  the  small  boys  is  one  of  the  salient  fea-  ' 
tures  of  the  group  life.  The  little  girls  are  just  begin-  V 
ning  to  "be  ashamed"  in  the  presence  of  older  brothers,  *^ 
and  the  prohibition  that  one  small  girl  must  never  join 
a  group  of  boys  is  beginning  to  be  enforced.  The  fact 
that  the(boys  are  less  burdened  and  so  can  range  fur- 
ther afield  in  search  of  adventure,  while  the  girls  have  ^ 
to  carry  their  heavy  little  charges  with  them,  also  makes 
a  difference  between  the  sexes.  ^  The  groups  of  small 
children  which  hang  about  the  fringes  of  some  adult 

[59] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

activity  often  contain  both  girls  and  boys,  but  here  the 
association  principle  is  simply  age  discrimination  on  the 
part  of  their  elders,  rather  than  voluntary  association 
on  the  children's  part. 

These  age  gangs  are  usually  confined  to  the  children 
who  live  in  eight  or  ten  contiguous  households.*  They 
are  flexible  chance  associations,  the  members  of  which 
manifest  a  vivid  hostility  towards  their  contemporaries 
in  neighbouring  villages  and  sometimes  towards  other 
gangs  within  their  own  village.  Blood  ties  cut  across 
these  neighbourhood  alignments  so  that  a  child  may  be 
on  good  terms  with  members  of  two  or  three  different 
groups.  A  strange  child  from  another  group,  provided 
she  came  alone,  could  usually  take  refuge  beside  a  rela- 
tive. But  the  little  girls  of  Siufaga  looked  askance  at 
the  little  girls  of  Luma,  the  nearest  village  and  both 
lool^d  with  even  greater  suspicion  at  the  little  girls 
from  Faleasao,  who  lived  twenty  minutes'  walk  away. 
However,  heart  burnings  over  these  divisions  were  very 
temporary  affairs.  When  Tua's  brother  was  ill,  her 
entire  family  moved  from  the  far  end  of  Siufaga  into 
the  heart  of  Luma.  For  a  few  days  Tua  hung  rather 
dolefully  about  the  house,  only  to  be  taken  in  within 
a  week  by  the  central  Luma  children  with  complete 
amiability.  But  when  she  returned  some  weeks  later 
J  ':  to  Siufaga,  she  became  again  "a  Siufaga  girl,"  object 
elect  of  institutionalised  scorn  and  gibes  to  her  recent 
companions. 

*See  Neighbourhood  Maps.     Appendix  I,  page  251. 

[60] 


r 


THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

No_very  intense  friendships  are  made  at  this  age."^  J^ 
The  relationship  and  neighbourhood  structure  of  the  (^ 
group  overshadows  the  personalities  within  it.  Also  \/ 
the  most  intense  affection  is  always  reserved  for  near 
relatives  and  pairs  of  little  sisters  take  the  place  of 
chums.  The  Western  comment,  "Yes,  Mary  and  Julia 
are  such  good  friends  as  well  as  sisters!"  becomes  in 
Samoa,  "But  she  is  a  relative,"  if  a  friendship  is  com- 
mented upon.  The  older  ones  fend  for  the  younger, 
give  them  their  spoils,  weave  them  flower  necklaces  and 
give  them  their  most  treasured  shells.  This  relation- 
ship aspect  is  the  only  permanent  element  in  the  group 
and  even  this  is  threatened  by  any  change  of  residence. 
The  emotional  tone  attached  to  the  inhabitants  of  a 
strange  village  tends  to  make  even  a  well-known  cousin 
seem  a  little  strange. 

Of  the  different  groups  of  little  girls  there  was  only 
one  which  shov/ed  characteristics  which  would  make  it 
possible  to  classify  it  as  a  gang.  An  accident  of  resi- 
dence accounts  for  the  most  intense  group  development 
being  in  the  centre  of  Luma,  where  nine  little  girls  of 
nearly  the  same  age  and  with  abundant  relationship  ties 
lived  close  together.  The  development  of  a  group '^  . 
which  played  continually  together  and  maintained  a 
fairly  coherent  hostility  towards  outsiders,  seems  to  be  I 
more  of  a  function  of  residence  than  of  the  personality 
of  any  child  particularly  endowed  with  powers  of  lead- 
ership. The  nine  little  girls  in  this  group  were  less 
shy,  less  suspicious,  more  generous  towards  one  another, 

[61] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

more  socially  enterprising  than  other  children  of  the 
same  age  and  in  general  reflected  the  socialising  effects 
of  group  life.  Outside  this  group,  the  children  of  this 
age  had  to  rely  much  more  upon  their  immediate  re- 
lationship group  reinforced  perhaps  by  the  addition  of 
one  or  two  neighbours.  Where  the  personality  of  a 
child  stood  out  it  was  more  because  of  exceptional  home 
environment  than  a  result  of  social  give-and-take  with 
children  of  her  own  age. 

Children  of  this  age  had  no  group  activities  ex- 
/     J  cept  play,  in  direct  antithesis  to  the  home  life  where 

'  the  child's  only^  function  was  work — ^baby-tending  and 
the  performance  of  numerous  trivial  tasks  and  innu- 
merable errands.  They  foregathered  in  the  early  eve- 
ning, before  the  late  Samoan  supper,  and  occasionally 
during  the  general  siesta  hour  in  the  afternoon.  On 
moonlight  nights  they  scoured  the  villages  alternately 
attacking  or  fleeing  from  the  gangs  of  small  boys,  peek- 
ing through  drawn  shutters,  catching  land  crabs,  am- 
bushing wandering  lovers,  or  sneaking  up  to  watch  a 
birth  or  a  miscarriage  in  some  distant  house.  Possessed 
by  a  fear  of  the  chiefs,  a  fear  of  small  boys,  a  fear 
of  their  relatives  and  by  a  fear  of  ghosts,  no  gang  of 
less  than  four  or  five  dared  to  venture  forth  on  these 
nocturnal  excursions.  They  were  veritable  groups  of 
little  outlaws  escaping  from  the  exactions  of  routine 

/tasks.     Because  of  the  strong  feeling  for  relationship 

j/ //and  locality,  the  part  played  by  stolen  time,  the  need 

|/   for  immediately  executed  group  plans,  and  the  punish- 

[62] 


THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

ment  which  hung  over  the  heads  of  children  who  got 
too  far  out  of  earshot,  the  Samoan  child  was  as  de- 
pendent upon  the  populousness  of  her  immediate  lo-^- 
cality,  as  is  the  child  in  a  rural  community  in  the  West, 
True  her  isolation  here  was  never  one-eighth  of  a  mile 
in  extent,  but  glaring  sun  and  burning  sands,  coupled 
with  the  number  of  relatives  to  be  escaped  from  in  the 
day  or  the  number  of  ghosts  to  be  escaped  from  at  night, 
magnified  this  distance  until  as  a  barrier  to  companion- 
ship it  was  equivalent  to  three  or  four  miles  in  rural 
America.  Thus  there  occurred  the  phenomenon  of  the 
isolated  child  in  a  village  full  of  children  of  her  own 
age.  Such  was  Luna,  aged  ten,  who  lived  in  one  of  the 
^'scattered  houses  belonging  to  a  high  chief's  household. 
This  house  was  situated  at  the  very  end  of  the  village 
where  she  lived  with  her  grandmother,  her  mother's 
sister  Sami,  Sami's  husband  and  baby,  and  two  younger 
maternal  aunts,  aged  seventeen  and  fifteen.  Luna's 
mother  was  dead.  Her  other  brothers  and  sisters  lived 
on  another  island  with  her  father's  people.  She  was 
ten,  but  young  for 'her  age,  a  quiet,  listless  child,  re- 
luctant to  take  the  initiative,  the  sort  of  child  who 
would  always  need  an  institutionalised  group  life.  Her 
only  relatives  close  by  were  two  girls  of  fourteen, 
whose  long  legs  and  absorption  in  semi-adult  tasks 
made  them  far  too  grown-up  companions  for  her. 
Some  little  girls  of  fourteen  might  have  tolerated 
Luna  about,  but  not  Selu,  the  younger  of  the  cousins, 
whose  fine  mat  was  already  three  feet  under  way.    In 

[63] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

the  next  house,  a  stone's  throw  away,  lived  two  little 
girls,  Pimi  and  Vana,  aged  eight  and  ten.  But  they 
were  not  relatives  and  being  chief  baby-tenders  to  four 
younger  children,  they  had  no  time  for  exploring. 
There  were  no  common  relatives  to  bring  them  to- 
gether and  so  Luna  lived  a  solitary  life,  except  when 
an  enterprising  young  aunt  of  eleven  came  home  to 
her  mother's  house.  This  aunt,  Siva,  was  a  fascinat- 
ing companion,  a  vivid  and  precocious  child,  whom 
Luna  followed  about  in  open-mouthed  astonishment. 
But  Siva  had  proved  too  much  of  a  handful  for  her 
widowed  mother,  and  the  mataly  her  uncle,  had  taken 
her  to  live  in  his  immediate  household  at  the  other 
end  of  the  village,  on  the  other  side  of  the  central 
Luma  gang.  They  formed  far  more  attractive  com- 
panions and  Siva  seldom  got  as  far  as  her  mother's 
house  in  her  occasional  moments  of  freedom.  So  un- 
enterprising Luna  cared  for  her  little  cousin,  followed 
her  aunt  and  grandmother  about  and  most  of  the  time 
presented  a  very  forlorn  appearance. 

In  strong  contrast  was  the  fate  of  Lusi,  who  was  only 
seven,  too  young  to  be  really  eligible  for  the  games  of 
her  ten-  and  eleven-year-old  elders.  Had  she  lived  in 
an  isolated  spot,  she  would  have  been  merely  a  neigh- 
bourhood baby.  But  her  house  was  in  a  strategic  posi- 
tion, next  door  to  that  of  her  cousins,  Maliu  and  Pola, 
important  members  of  the  Luma  gang.  Maliu,  one  of 
the  oldest  members  of  the  group,  had  a  tremendous 
feeling  for  all  her  young  relatives,  and  Lusi  was  her 

[64] 


r  / 
THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

first  cousin.     So   tiny,   immature   Lusi   had  the   full 
benefit  of  a  group  life  denied  to  Luna. 

At  the  extreme  end  of  Siufaga  lived  Vina,  a  gentle, 
unassuming  girl  of  fourteen.  Her  father's  house  stood 
all  alone  in  the  centre  of  a  grove  of  palm  trees,  just 
out  of  sight  and  ear-shot  of  the  nearest  neighbour. 
Her  only  companions  were  her  first  cousin,  a  reserved 
capable  eighteen-year-old  and  two  cousins  of  seventeen 
and  nineteen.  There  was  one  little  cousin  of  twelve 
also  in  the  neighbourhood,  but  five  younger  brothers 
and  sisters  kept  her  busy.  Vina  also  had  several  broth- 
ers and  sisters  younger  than  herself,  but  they  were  old 
enough  to  fend  for  themselves  and  Vina  was  compara- 
tively free  to  follow  the  older  girls  on  fishing  expedi- 
tions. So  she  never  escaped  from  being  the  little  girl, 
tagging  after  older  ones,  carrying  their  loads  and  run- 
ning their  errands.  She  was  a  flurried  anxious  child, 
overconcerned  with  pleasing  others,  docile  in  her 
chance  encounters  with  contemporaries  from  long  habit 
of  docility.  A  free  give-and-take  relationship  within 
her  own  age  group  had  been  denied  to  her  and  was  now 
denied  to  her  forever.  For  it  was  only  to  the  eight- 
to  twelve-year-old  girl  that  this  casual  group  associa- •' 
tion  was  possible.  As  puberty  approached,  and  a  girl 
gained  physical  strength  and  added  skill,  her  household 
absorbed  her  again.  She  must  make  the  oven,  she  must 
go  to  work  on  the  plantation,  she  must  fish.  Her  days 
were  filled  with  long  tasks  and  new  responsibilities. 

Such  a  child  was  Fitu.     In  September  she  was  one 

[65] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

of  the  dominant  members  of  the  gang,  a  little  taller 
than  the  rest,  a  little  lankier,  more  strident  and  execu- 
tive, but  very  much  a  harum-scarum  little  girl  among 
little  girls,  with  a  great  baby  always  on  her  hip.  But 
by  April  she  had  turned  the  baby  over  to  a  younger 
sister  of  ninej  the  still  younger  baby  was  entrusted  to 
a  little  sister  of  five  and  Fitu  worked  with  her  mother 
on  the  plantations,  or  went  on  long  expeditions  after 
hibiscus  bark,  or  for  fish.  She  took  the  family  washing 
to  the  sea  and  helped  make  the  oven  on  cooking  days. 
Occasionally  in  the  evening  she  slipped  away  to  play 
games  on  the  green  with  her  former  companions  but 
usually  she  was  too  tired  from  the  heavy  unaccustomed 
work,  and  also  a  slight  strangeness  had  crept  over  her. 
She  felt  that  her  more  adult  activities  set  her  off  from 
the  rest  of  the  group  with  whom  she  had  felt  so  much 
at  home  the  fall  before.  She  made  only  abortive  at- 
tempts to  associate  with  the  older  girls  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. Her  mother  sent  her  to  sleep  in  the  pas- 
tor's house  next  door,  but  she  returned  home  after 
three  days.  Those  girls  were  all  too  old,  she  said. 
"Laititi  aV  ("I  am  but  young").  And  yet  she  was 
spoiled  for  her  old  group.  The  three  villages  num- 
bered fourteen  such  children,  just  approaching  puberty, 
preoccupied  by  unaccustomed  tasks  and  renewed  and 
closer  association  with  the  adults  of  their  families,  not 
yet  interested  in  boys,  and  so  forming  no  new  alliances 
in  accordance  with  sex  Interests.  Soberly  they  perform 
their  household  tasks,  select  a  teacher  from  the  older 

[66] 


THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

women  of  their  family,  learn  to  bear  the  suffix,  mean- 
ing "little"  dropped  from  the  "little  girl"  which  had 
formerly  described  them.  But  they  never  again  amal- 
gamate into  such  free  and  easy  groups  as  the  before- 
the-teens  gang.  As  sixteen-  and  seventeen-year-old 
girls,  they  will  still  rely  upon  relatives,  and  the  picture 
is  groupings  of  twos  or  of  threes,  never  more.  The' 
neighbourhood  feelings  drop  out  and  girls  of  seventeen 
will  ignore  a  near  neighbour  who  is  an  age  mate  and 
go  the  length  of  the  village  to  visit  a  relative.  Rela- 
tionship and  similar  sex  interests  are  now  the  deciding 
factor  in  friendships.  Girls  also  followed  passively 
the  stronger  allegiance  of  the  boys.  If  a  girPs  sweet- 
heart has  a  chum  who  is  interested  in  a  cousin  of  hers, 
the  girls  strike  up  a  lively,  but  temporary,  friendship. 
Occasionally  such  friendships  even  go  outside  of  the 
relationship  group. 

Although  girls  may  confide  only  in  one  or  two  girl 
relatives,  their  sex  status  is  usually  sensed  by  the^jotlier 
women  of  the  village  and  alliances  shift  and  change  .  , 
on  this  basis,  from  the  shy  adolescent  who  is  suspicious  [ 
of  all  older  girls,  to  the  girl  whose  first  or  second  love 
affair  still  looms  as  very  important,  to  the  girls  who 
are  beginning  to  centre  all  their  attention  upon  one 
boy  and  possibly  matrimony.     Finally  the  unmarried  ~" 
mother  selects  her  friends,  when  possible,  from  those 
in  like  case  with  herself,  or  from  women  of  ambiguous 
marital  position,  deserted  or  discredited  young  wives. 

Very  few  friendships  of  younger  for  older  girls  cut 

[67] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

across  these  groupings  after  puberty.  The  twelve- 
year-old  may  have  a  great  affection  and  admiration  for 
her  sixteen-year-old  cousin  (although  any  of  these 
enthusiasms  for  older  girls  are  pallid  matters  com- 
pared to  a  typical  school  girl  "crush"  in  our  civilisa- 
tion). But  when  she  is  fifteen  and  her  cousin  nine- 
teen, the  picture  changes.  All  of  the  adult  and  near- 
V  adult  world  is  hostile,  spying  upon  her  love  affairs  in 
I  Its  more  circumspect  sophistication,  supremely  not  to  be 
trusted.  No  one  is  to  be  trusted  who  is  not  immedi- 
ately engaged  in  similarly  hazardous  adventures. 

It  may  safely  be  said  that  without  the  artificial  con- 
ditions produced  by  residence  in  the  native  pastor's 
household  or  in  the  large  missionary  boarding  school, 
the  girls  do  not  go  outside  their  relationship  group  to 
make  friends.  (In  addition  to  the  large  girls'  boarding 
school  which  served  all  of  American  Samoa,  the  native 
pastor  of  each  community  maintained  a  small  informal 
boarding  school  for  boys  and  girls.  To  these  schools 
were  sent  the  girls  whose  fathers  wished  to  send  them 
later  to  the  large  boarding  school,  and  also  girls  whose 
parents  wished  them  to  have  three  or  four  years  of  the 
superior  educational  advantages  and  stricter  supervision 
of  the  pastor's  home.)  Here  unrelated  girls  live  side 
by  side  sometimes  for  years.  But  as  one  of  the  two 
defining  features  of  a  household  is  common  residence, 
the  friendships  formed  between  girls  who  have  lived 
in  the  pastor's  household  are  not  very  different  psy- 
chologically from  the  friendship  of  cousins  or  girls 

[68] 


THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

connected  only  by  affinity  who  live  in  the  same  family. 
The  only  friendships  which  really  are  different  in  kind 
from  those  formed  by  common  residence  or  member- 
ship in  the  same  relationship  group,  are  the  institution- 
alised relationships  between  the  wives  of  chiefs  and  the 
wives  of  talking  chiefs.  But  these  friendships  can  only 
be  understood  in  connection  with  the  friendships  among 
boys  and  men. 

The  little  boys  follow  the  same  pattern  as  do  thes. 
I  little  girls,  running  in  a  gang  based  upon  the  double  ■'   ^ 
"bonds  of  neighbourhood  and  relationship.     The  feel- Y 
ing  for  the  ascendency  of  age  is  always  much  stronger j^ 
than  in  the  case  of  girls  because  the  older  boys  do  notA 
withdraw  into  their  family  groups  as  do  the  gi^lf('   The 
fifteen-  and  sixteen-year-old  boys  gang  together  with 
the  same  freedom  as  do  the  twelve-year-olds.   The  bor- 
derline between  small  boys  and  bigger  boys  is  therefore 
a  continually  shifting  one,  the  boys  in  an  intermediate 
position  now  lording  it  over  the  younger  boys,  now 
tagging   obsequiously    in    the    wake    of   their   elders. 
There  are  two  institutionalised  relationships  between 
boys  which  are  called  by  the  same  name  and  possibly 
were  at  one  time  one  relationship.    This  is  the  soay  the 
companion  at  circumcision  and  the  ambassador  in  love  y/ 
afFairs.     Boys  are  circumcised  in  pairs,  making  the  ar- 
rangements themselves  and  seeking  out  an  older  man 
who  has  acquired  a  reputation  for  skilfulness.     There 
seems  to  be  here  simply  a  logical  inter-relationship  of 
cause  and  effect j  a  boy  chooses  a  friend  (who  is  usu- 

[69] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ally  also  a  relative)  as  his  companion  and  the  experience 
shared  binds  them  closer  together.  There  were  sev- 
eral pairs  of  boys  in  the  village  who  had  been  circum- 
cised together  and  were  still  inseparable  companions, 
often  sleeping  together  in  the  house  of  one  of  them. 
\  Casual  homosexual  practices  occurred  in  such  relation- 

'^  I  ships.  However,  when  the  friendships  of  grown  boys 
of  the  village  were  analysed,  no  close  correspondence 
with  the  adolescent  allegiance  was  found  and  older  boys 

^       were  as  often  found  in  groups  of  three  or  four  as  in 

y         pairs. 

^      /" '  When  a  boy  is  two  or  three  years  past  puberty,  his 

I  I  choice  of  a  companion  is  influenced  by  the  convention 
■.  that  a  young  man  seldom  speaks  for  himself  in  love 
'  and  never  in  a  proposal  of  marriage.  He  accordingly 
';  needs  a  friend  of  about  his  age  whom  he  can  trust  to 
sing  his  praises  and  press  his  suit  with  requisite  fervour 
^\  and  discretion.  For  this  office,  a  relative,  or,  if  the 
affair  be  desperate,  several  relatives  are  employed.  A 
youth  is  influenced  in  his  choice  by  his  need  of  an  am- 
bassador who  is  not  only  trustworthy  and  devoted  but 
plausible  and  insinuating  as  a  procurer.  This  soa  re- 
lationship is  often,  but  not  necessarily,  reciprocal.  The 
expert  in  love  comes  in  time  to  dispense  with  the  serv- 
ices of  an  intermediary,  wishing  to  taste  to  the  full  the 
sweets  of  all  the  stages  in  courtship.  At  the  same  time 
his  services  are  much  in  demand  by  others,  if  they 
entertain  any  hope  at  all  of  his  dealing  honourably  by 
his  principal. 

[70] 


THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

But  the  boys  have  also  other  matters  besides  love- 
making  in  which  they  must  co-operate.  Three  are 
needed  to  man  a  bonito  canoe ;  two  usually  go  together 
to  lasso  eels  on  the  reef  j  work  on  the  communal  taro 
plantations  demands  the  labour  of  all  the  youths  in  the 
village.  So  that  while  a  boy  too  chooses  his  best  friends 
from  among  his  relatives,  his  sense  of  social  solidarity 
is  always  much  stronger  than  that  of  a  girl.  The 
Aualuma,  the  organisation  of  young  girls  and  wives  of 
untitled  men,  is  an  exceedingly  loose  association  gath- 
ered for  very  occasional  communal  work,  and  still  more 
occasional  festivities.  In  villages  where  the  old  intri- 
cacies of  the  social  organisation  are  beginning  to  fall 
into  disuse,  it  is  the  Aualmita  which  disappears  first, 
while  the  Aumaga,  the  young  men's  organisation,  has 
too  important  a  place  in  the  village  economy  to  be  thus 
ignored.  The  Aumaga  is  indeed  the  most  enduring 
social  factor  in  the  village.  The  matais  meet  more 
formally  and  spend  a  great  deal  of  time  in  their  own 
households,  but  the  young  men  work  together  during 
the  day,  feast  before  and  after  their  labours,  are  present 
as  a  serving  group  at  all  meetings  of  the  matais,  and 
when  the  day's  work  is  over,  dance  and  go  courting  to- 
gether in  the  evening.  Many  of  the  young  men  sleep 
in  their  friends'  houses,  a  privilege  but  grudgingly 
accorded  the  more  chaperoned  girls. 

Another  factor  which  qualified  men's  relationships  is 
the  reciprocal  relationship  between  chiefs  and  talking 
chiefs.     The  holders  of  these  two  classes  of  titles  are 

[71] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

not  necessarily  related,  although  this  is  often  the  case 
as  it  is  considered  an  advantage  to  be  related  to  both 
ranks.  But  the  talking  chiefs  are  major  domos,  assist- 
ants, ambassadors,  henchmen,  and  councillors  of  their 
chiefs,  and  these  relationships  are  often  foreshadowed 
among  the  young  men,  the  heirs-apparent  or  the  heirs 
aspirant  to  the  family  titles. 

Among  women  there  are  occasional  close  alliances 
between  the  taufo  and  the  daughter  of  her  father's 
principal  talking  chief.  But  these  friendships  always 
suffer  from  their  temporary  character  j  the  taufo  will 
inevitably  marry  into  another  village.  And  it  is  rather 
between  the  wife  of  the  chief  and  the  wife  of  a  talking 
chief  that  the  institutionalised  and  life-long  friend- 
ship exists.  The  wife  of  the  talking  chief  acts  as 
assistant,  advisor,  and  mouthpiece  for  the  chief's  wife 
and  in  turn  counts  upon  the  chief's  wife  for  support 
^and  material  help.  It  is  a  friendship  based  upon  re- 
ciprocal obligations  having  their  origins  ia  the  relation- 
ship between  the  women's  husbands,  and  it  is  the  only 
women's  friendship  which  oversteps  the  limits  of 
the  relationship  and  affinity  group.  Such  friendships 
based  on  an  accident  of  marriage  and  enjoined  by  the 
social  structure  should  hardly  be  classed  as  voluntary. 
And  within  the  relationship  group  itself,  friendship  is 
so  patterned  as  to  be  meaningless.  I  once  asked  a  young 
married  woman  if  a  neighbour  with  whom  she  was 
always  upon  the  most  uncertain  and  irritated  terms  was 
a  friend  of  hers.    "Why,  of  course,  her  mother's  father's 

[72] 


THE  GIRL  AND  HER  AGE  GROUP 

father,  and  my  father's  mother's  father  were  brothers." 
Friendship  based  on  temperamental  congeniality  was 
a  most  tenuous  bond,  subject  to  shifts  of  interest  and 
to  shifts  of  residence,  and  a  woman  came  to  rely  more 
and  more  on  the  associates  to  whose  society  and  interest 
■blood  and  marriage  entitled  her. 

Association  based  upon  age  as  a  principle  may  be  said', 
to  have  ceased  for  the  girls  before  puberty,  due  to  the 
exceedingly  individual  nature  of  their  tasks  and  th« 
need  for  secrecy  in  their  amatory  adventures.  In  the 
case  of  the  boys,  greater  freedom,  a  more  compelling' 
social  structure,  and  continuous  participation  in  co-op- 
erative tasks,  brings  about  an  age-group  associatioii 
which  lasts  through  life.  This  grouping  is  influenced' 
but  not  determined  by  relationship,  and  distorted  by 
the  influence  of  rank,  prospective  rank  in  the  case  of 
youth,  equal  rank  but  disproportionate  age  in  the  case 
of  older  men. 


[73] 


VI 

THE    GIRL    IN    THE    COMMUNITY 

THE  community  ignores  both  boys  and  girls  from 
birth  until  they  are  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age. 
Children  under  this  age  have  no  social  standing,  no 
recognised  group  activities,  no  part  in  the  social  life 
except  when  they  are  conscripted  for  the  informal 
dance  floor.  But  at  a  year  or  two  beyond  puberty — 
the  age  varies  from  village  to  village  so  that  boys  of 
sixteen  will  in  one  place  still  be  classed  as  small  boys, 
in  another  as  taule^ale^asy  young  men — ^both  boys  and 
girls  are  grouped  into  a  rough  approximation  of  the 
adult  groupings,  given  a  name  for  their  organisation, 
and  are  invested  with  definite  obligations  and  privi- 
leges in  the  community  life. 

The  organisation  of  young  men,  the  Aumaga,'  of 
young  girls  and  the  wives  of  untitled  men  and  widows, 
the  Aualumay  and  of  the  wives  of  titled  men,  are  all 
echoes  of  the  central  political  structure  of  the  village, 
the  FonOy  the  organisation  of  mataisy  men  who  have 
the  titles  of  chiefs  or  of  talking  chiefs.  The  Fono  is 
always  conceived  as  a  round  house  in  which  each  title 
has  a  special  position,  must  be  addressed  with  certain 
ceremonial  phrases,  and  given  a  fixed  place  in  the  order 
of  precedence  in  the  serving  of  the  kava.  This  ideal 
house  has  certain  fixed  divisions,  in  the  right  sector  sit 
the  high  chief  and  his  special  assistant  chiefs  j  in  the 

[74] 


THE  Gli  L  IN  THE  COMMUNITY 

front  of  the  house  sit  the  talking  chiefs  whose  business 
it  is  to  make  the  speeches,  welcome  strangers,  accept 
gifts,  preside  over  the  distribution  of  food  and  make  all 
plans  and  arrangements  for  group  activities.  Against 
the  posts  at  the  back  of  the  house  sit  the  matah  of  low 
rank,  and  between  the  posts  and  at  the  centre  sit  those 
of  so  little  importance  that  no  place  is  reserved  for 
them.  This  framework  of  titles  continues  from  gen-, 
eration  to  generation  and  holds  a  fixed  place  in  the 
larger  ideal  structure  of  the  titles  of  the  whole  island, 
the  whole  archipelago,  the  whole  of  Samoa.  With 
some  of  these  titles,  which  are  in  the  gift  of  certain 
families,  go  certain  privileges,  a  right  to  a  house  name, 
a  right  to  confer  a  taufo  name,  a  princess  title,  upon 
some  young  girl  relative  and  an  heir-apparent  title,  the 
manaiaj  on  some  boy  of  the  household.  Besides  these 
prerogatives  of  the  high  chiefs,  each  member  of  the 
two  classes  of  fnalais,  chiefs  and  talking  chiefs,  has 
certain  ceremonial  rights.  A  talking  chief  must  be 
served  his  kava  with  a  special  gesture,  must  be  ad- 
dressed with  a  separate  set  of  verbs  and  nouns  suitable 
to  his  rank,  must  be  rewarded  by  the  chiefs  in  tapa  or 
fine  mats  for  his  ceromonially  rendered  services.  The 
■  chiefs  must  be  addressed  with  still  another  set  of  nouns 
and  verbs,  must  be  served  with  a  different  and  more 
honourable  gesture  in  the  kava  ceremony,  must  be 
furnished  with  food  by  their  talking  chiefs,  must  be 
honoured  and  escorted  by  the  talking  chiefs  on  every 
important  occasion.  The  name  of  the  village,  the  cere- 
monial name  of  the  public  square  in  which  great  cere- 

[75] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  S  \MOA 

monies  are  held,  the  name  of  the  meeting  house  of  the 
FonOy  the  names  of  the  principal  chiefs  and  talking 
chiefs,  the  names  of  taupo  and  manaia,  of  the  Aualuma 
and  the  Aumaga,  are  contained  in  a  set  of  ceremonial 
salutations  called  the  Fa'alupega,  or  courtesy  titles  of 
a  village  or  district.  Visitors  on  formally  entering  a 
village  must  recite  the  Fa'alupega  as  their  initial  cour- 
tesy to  their  hosts. 

The  Aumaga  mirrors  this  organisation  of  the  older 
men.  Here  the  young  men  learn  to  make  speeches,  to 
conduct  themselves  with  gravity  and  decorum,  to  serve 
and  drink  the  kava,  to  plan  and  execute  group  enter- 
prises. When  a  boy  is  old  enough  to  enter  the  Aumaga y 
the  head  of  his  household  either  sends  a  present  of 
food  to  the  group,  announcing  the  addition  of  the  boy 
to  their  number,  or  takes  him  to  a  house  where  they 
are  meeting  and  lays  down  a  great  kava  root  as  a  pres- 
ent. Henceforth  the  boy  is  a  member  of  a  group 
which  is  almost  constantly  together.  Upon  them  falls 
all  the  heavy  work  of  the  village  and  also  the  greater 
part  of  the  social  intercourse  between  villages  which 
centres  about  the  young  unmarried  people.  When  a 
visiting  village  comes,  it  is  the  Aumaga  which  calls  in 
a  body  upon  the  visiting  taufOy  taking  gifts,  dancing 
and  singing  for  her  benefit. 

The  organisation  of  the  Aualuma  is  a  less  formalised 
version  of  the  Aumaga.  When  a  girl  is  of  age,  two  or 
three  years  past  puberty,  varying  with  the  village  prac- 
tice, her  fnatai  will  send  an  offering  of  food  to  the 
house  of  the  chief  taufo  of  the  village,  thus  announc- 

[76] 


THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COMMUNITY 

Ing  that  he  wishes  the  daughter  of  his  house  to  be 
henceforth  counted  as  one  of  the  group  of  young  girls 
who  form  her  court.  But  while  the  Aumaga  is  cen- 
tred about  the  FonOy  the  young  men  meeting  outside 
or  in  a  separate  house,  but  exactly  mirroring  the  forms 
and  ceremonies  of  their  elders,  the ^ualuma  is  centred 
about  the  person  of  the  tawpOy  forming  a  group  of  y 
maids  of  honour.  They  have  no  organisation  as  have 
the  Aumaga y  and  furthermore,  they  do  hardly  any 
work.  Occasionally  the  young  girls  may  be  called 
upon  to  sew  thatch  or  gather  paper  mulberry  j  more 
occasionally  they  plant  and  cultivate  a  paper  mulberry 
crop,  but  their  main  function  is  to  be  ceremonial  help- 
ers  for  the  meetings  of  the  wives  of  mataisy  and  vil- 
lage hostesses  in  inter-village  life.  In  many  parts  of 
Samoa  the  Aualuma  has  fallen  entirely  to  pieces  and 
is  only  remembered  in  the  greeting  words  that  fall 
from  the  lips  of  a  stranger.  But  if  the  Aumaga  should 
disappear,  Samoan  village  life  would  have  to  be  en- 
tirely reorganised,  for  upon  the  ceremonial  and  actual 
work  of  the  young  and  untitled  men  the  whole  life  of "-  v- 
the  village  depends. 

Although  the  wives  of  matais  have  no  organisation 
recognised  in  the  Fa'alupaga  (courtesy  titles),  their 
association  is  firmer  and  more  important  than  that  of 
the  Aualuma.  The  wives  of  titled  men  hold  their 
own  formal  meetings,  taking  their  status  from  their 
husbands,  sitting  at  their  husbands'  posts  and  drinking 
their  husbands'  kava.  The  wife  of  the  highest  chief 
receives  highest  honour,  the  wife  of  the  principal  talk- 

[77] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ing  chief  makes  the  most  Important  speeches.  The 
women  are  completely  dependent  upon  their  husbands 
for  their  status  in  this  village  group.  Once  a  man  has 
been  given  a  title,  he  can  never  go  back  to  the  Aumaga. 
His  title  may  be  taken  away  from  him  when  he  is  old, 
or  if  he  is  inefficient,  but  a  lower  title  will  be  given  him 
that  he  may  sit  and  drink  his  kava  with  his  former 
associates.  But  the  widow  or  divorced  wife  of  a  matai 
must  go  back  into  the  Aualuma,  sit  with  the  young  girls 
outside  the  house,  serve  the  food  and  run  the  errands, 
entering  the  women's  fono  only  as  a  servant  or  an 
entertainer.        ^,,-^-~~^ 

The  womei-p  fonos^^are  of  two  sorts:  fonos  which 
precede  or  fdllbw-eommunal  work,  sewing  the  thatch 
for  a  guest  house,  bringing  the  coral  rubble  for  its  floor 
or  weaving  fine  mats  for  the  dowry  of  the  taupo;  and 
ceremonial  fonos  to  welcome  visitors  from  another  vil- 
lage. Each  of  these  meetings  was  designated  by  its 
purpose,  as  a  falelalagUy  a  weaving  bee,  or  an  'aiga 
fiafia  tama'ita'iy  ladles'  feast.  **rhe  women  are  only 
recognised  socially  by  the  women  of  a  visiting  village 
but  the  tau-po  andTier  court  are  the  centre  of  the  rec- 
ognition of  both  men  and  women  In  the  malaga,  the 
travelTing. party.  And  these  wives  of  high  chiefs  have 
to  treat  their  own  tawpo  with  great  courtesy  and  respect, 
address  her  as  "your  highness,"  accompany  her  on 
journeys,  use  a  separate  set  of  nouns  and  verbs  when 
speaking  to  her.  Here  then  is  a  discrepancy  in  which 
the  young  girls  who  are  kept  in  strict  subjection  within 
their  households,  outrank  their  aunts  and  mothers  in 

[78] 


THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COMMUNITY 

the  social  life  between  villages.  This  ceremonial  un- 
dercutting of  the  older  women's  authority  might  seri- 
ously jeopardise  the  discipline  of  the  household,  if  it 
were  not  for  two  considerations.  The  first  is  the  tenu- 
ousness  of  the  girls'  organisation,  the  fact  that  within 
the  village  their  chief  raison  (Tetre  is  to  dance  attend- 
ance upon  the  older  women,  who  have  definite  indus- 
trial tasks  to  perform  for  the  village  j  the  second  is  the 
emphasis  upon  the  idea  of  service  as  the  chief  duty  of 
the  tawpo.  The  village  princess  is  also  the  village 
servant.  It  is  she  who  waits  upon  strangers,  spreads 
their  beds  and  makes  their  kava,  dances  when  they  wish 
it,  and  rises  from  her  sleep  to  serve  either  the  visitors 
or  her  own  chief.  And  she  is  compelled  to  serve  the 
social  needs  of  the  women  as  well  as  the  men.  Do  they 
decide  to  borrow  thatch  in  another  village,  they  dress 
their  tawpo  in  her  best  and  take  her  along  to  decorate 
the  fnalaga.  Her  marriage  is  a  village  matter,  planned 
and  carried  through  by  the  talking  chiefs  and  their 
wives  who  are  her  counsellors  and  chaperons.  So  that 
the  rank  of  the  taupo  is  really  a  further  daily  inroad 
upon  her  freedom  as  an  individual,  while  the  incessant 
chaperonage  to  which  she  is  subjected  and  the  way  in 
which  she  is  married  without  regard  to  her  own  wishes 
are  a. complete  denial  of  her  personality.  And  simi- 
larly, the  slighter  prestige  of  her  untitled  sisters,  whose 
chief  group  activity  is  waitmg  upon  their  elders,  has 
even  less  real  significance  in  the  daily  life  of  the  vil- 
lage. 

With  the  exception  of  the  tawpo y  the  assumption  of 

[79] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

whose  title  is  the  occasion  of  a  great  festival  and  enor- 
mous distribution  of  property  by  her  chief  to  the  talk- 
ing chiefs  who  must  hereafter  support  and  confirm  her 
rank,  a  Samoan  girl  of  good  family  has  two  ways  of 
making  her  debut.  The  first,  the  formal  entry  into  the 
Aualuma  is  often  neglected  and  is  more  a  formal  fee 
to  the  community  than  a  recognition  of  the  girl  herself. 
The  second  way  is  to  go  upon  a  malaga,  a  formal  trav- 
elling party.  She  may  go  as  a  near  relative  of  the 
taufo  in  which  case  she  will  be  caught  up  in  a  whirl  of 
entertainment  with  which  the  young  men  of  the  host 
village  surround  their  guests;  or  she  may  travel  as  the 
only  girl  in  a  small  travelling  party  in  which  case  she 
will  be  treated  as  a  taupo,  (All  social  occasions  demand 
the  presence  of  a  taufOy  a  manalay  and  a  talking  chief  j 
and  if  individuals  actually  holding  these  titles  are  not 
present,  some  one  else  has  to  play  the  role.)  Thus  it 
is  in  inter-village  life,  either  as  a  member  of  the 
Aualuma  who  call  upon  and  dance  for  the  manaia  of 
the  visiting  malaga^  or  as  a  visiting  girl  in  a  strange 
village,  that  the  unmarried  Samoan  girl  is  honoured 
and  recognised  by  her  community. 

But  these  are  exceptional  occasions.  A  malaga  may 
come  only  once  a  year,  especially  in  Manu'a  which 
numbers  only  seven  villages  in  the  whole  archipelago. 
And  in  the  daily  life  of  the  village,  at  crises,  births, 
deaths,  marriages,  the  unmarried  girls  have  no  cere- 
monial part  to  play.  They  are  simply  included  with 
the  "women  of  the  household"  whose  duty  it  is  to  pre- 
pare the  layette  for  the  new  baby,  or  carry  stones  to 

[80] 


THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COMMUNITY 

strew  on  the  new  grave.  It  is  almost  as  if  the  com- 
munity by  its  excessive  recognition  of  the  girl  as  a 
taupo  or  member  of  the  Aualumay  considered  itself 
exonerated  from  paying  any  more  attention  to  her. 

This  attitude  is  fostered  by  the  scarcity  of  taboos. 
In  many  parts  of  Polynesia,  all  women,  and  especially 
menstruating  women,  are  considered  contaminating  and 
dangerous.  A  continuous  rigorous  social  supervision  is 
necessary,  for  a  society  can  no  more  afford  to  ignore  its 
most  dangerous  members  than  it  can  afford  to  neglect 
its  most  valuable.  But  in  Samoa  a  girl's  power  of  doing  \ 
harm  is  very  limited.  She  cannot  make  tafoloy  a  bread-  r 
fruit  pudding  usually  made  by  the  young  men  in  any 
case,  nor  make  the  kava  while  she  is  menstruating.  But 
she  need  retire  to  no  special  house  j  she  need  not  eat 
alone  J  there  is  no  contamination  in  her  touch  or  look. 
In  common  with  the  young  men  and  the  older  women, 
a  girl  gives  a  wide  berth  to  a  place  where  chiefs  are  en- 
gaged in  formal  work,  unless  she  has  special  business 
there.  It  is  not  the  presence  of  a  woman  which  is  inter- 
dicted but  the  uncalled-for  intrusion  of  any  one  of 
either  sex.  No  woman  can  be  officially  present  at  a 
gathering  of  chiefs  unless  she  is  tau-po  making  the  kava, 
but  any  woman  may  bring  her  husband  his  pipe  or  come 
to  deliver  a  message,  so  long  as  her  presence  need  not 
be  recognised.  The  only  place  where  a  woman's  femi- 
ninity is  in  itself  a  real  source  of  danger  is  in  the  matter 
of  fishing  canoes  and  fishing  tackle  which  she  is  for- 
bidden to  touch  upon  pain  of  spoiling  the  fishing.  But 
the  enforcement  of  this  prohibition  is  in  the  hands  of 

-       [8i] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

individual  fishermen  in  whose  houses  the  fishing  equip- 
ment is  kept. 

Within  the  relationship  group  matters  are  entirely 
different.  Here  women  are  very  specifically  recog- 
nised. The  oldest  female  progenitor  of  the  line,  that 
is,  the  sister  of  the  last  holder  of  the  title,  or  his 
predecessor's  sister,  has  special  rights  over  the  distri- 
bution of  the  dowry  which  comes  into  the  household. 
She  holds  the  veto  in  the  selling  of  land  and  other  im- 
portant family  matters.  Her  curse  is  the  most  dread- 
ful a  man  can  incur  for  she  has  the  power  to  "cut  the 
line"  and  make  the  name  extinct.  If  a  man  falls  ill, 
it  is  his  sister  who  must  first  take  the  formal  oath  that 
she  has  wished  him  no  harm,  as  anger  in  her  heart  is 
most  potent  for  evil.  When  a  man  dies,  it  is  his  pa- 
ternal aunt  or  his  sister  who  prepares  the  body  for 
burial,  anointing  it  with  turmeric  and  rubbing  it  with 
oil,  and  it  is  she  who  sits  beside  the  body,  fanning  away 
the  flies,  and  keeps  the  fan  in  her  possession  ever  after. 
And,  in  the  more  ordinary  affairs  of  the  household,  in 
the  economic  arrangements-betwccn-t^eiat-iv^y  in  dis- 
putes over  property  or  in  family  feuds,  the  women  play 
as^active  a  part  as  the  men. 

The  girl  and  woman  repays  the  general  social  negli- 
gence which  she  receives  with  a  corresponding  insou- 
ciance. She  treats  the  lore  of  the  village,  the  gene- 
alogies of  the  titles,  tke  origin  myths  and  local  tales, 
the  intricacies  of  the  social  organisation  with  supreme 
indifference.  It  is  an  exceptional  girl  who  can  give  her 
great-grandfather's  name,  the  exceptional  boy  who  can- 

[82] 


THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COMMUNITY 

not  give  his  genealogy  in  traditional  form  for  several 
generations.  While  the  boy  of  sixteen  or  seventeen  is 
eagerly  trying  to  master  the  esoteric  allusiveness  of  the 
talking  chief  whose  style  he  most  admires,  the  girl  of 
the  same  age  learns  the  minimum  of  etiquette.  Yet 
this  is  in  no  wise  due  to  lack  of  ability.  The  tatipo  must 
have  a  meticulous  knowledge,  not  only  of  the  social 
arrangements  of  her  own  village,  but  also  of  those  of 
neighbouring  villages.  She  must  serve  visitors  in  proper 
form  and  with  no  hesitation  after  the  talking  chief  has 
chanted  their  titles  and  the  names  of  their  kava  cups. 
Should  she  take  the  wrong  post  which  is  the  preroga- 
tive of  another  taufo  who  outranks  her,  her  hair  will 
be  soundly  pulled  by  her  rival's  female  attendants. 
She  learns  the  intricacies  of  the  social  organisation  as 
well  as  her  brother  does.  Still  more  notable  is  the  case 
of  the  wife  of  a  talking  chief.  Whether  she  is  chosen 
for  her  docility  by  a  man  who  has  already  assumed  his 
title,  or  whether,  as  is  often  the  case,  she  marries  some 
boy  of  her  acquaintance  who  later  is  made  a  talking 
chief,  the  tausiy  wife  of  a  talking  chief,  is  quite  equal 
to  the  occasion.  In  the  meetings  of  women  she  must 
be  a  master  of  etiquette  and  the  native  rules  of  order, 
she  must  interlard  her  speeches  with  a  wealth  of  unin- 
telligible traditional  material  and  rich  allusiveness,  she 
must  preserve  the  same  even  voice,  the  same  lofty  de- 
meanour, as  her  husband.  And  ultimately,  the  wife  of 
an  important  talking  chief  must  qualify  as  a  teacher  as 
well  as  a  performer,  for  it  is  her  duty  to  train  the  taufo. 
But  unless  the  community  thus  recognises  her  existence, 

[83] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

and  makes  formal  demand  upon  her  time  and  ability, 
a  woman  gives  to  it  a  bare  minimum  of  her  attention. 

In  like  manner,  women  are  not  dealt  with  in  the. 
primitive  penal  code.  A  man  who  commits  adultery 
with  a  chief's  wife  was  beaten  and  banished,  sometimes 
even  drowned  by  the  outraged  community,  but  the 
woman  was  only  cast  out  by  her  husband.  The  taufo 
who  was  found  not  to  be  a  virgin  was  simply  beaten  by 
her  female  relatives.  To-day  if  evil  befalls  the  village, 
and  it  is  attributed  to  some  unconfessed  sin  on  the  part 
of  a  member  of  the  community,  the  Fono  and  the 
Aumaga  are  convened  and  confession  is  enjoined  upon 
any  one  who  may  have  evil  upon  his  conscience,  but  no 
such  demand  is  made  upon  the  Aualuma  or  the  wives 
of  the  matals.  This  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  family 
confessional  where  the  sister  is  called  upon  first. 

In  matters  of  work  the  village  makes  a  few  precise 
demands.  It  is  the  women's  work  to  cultivate  the 
sugar  cane  and~sew  tlie""thatcE  f  or  WeTooFoT'the  giiest 
IlDiise^^to  weave  the  palm  leaf  blinds,  and  bring  the 
coral_rubble  for  tIie"~ffoof.  When  the  girls  "have  1a 
paper  mulberry  plantation,  the  Aumaga  occasionally 
help  them  in  the  work,  the  girls  in  turn  making  a  feast 
for  the  boys,  turning  the  whole  affair  into  an  indus- 
^>—  trious  picnic.  But  between  men's  formal  work  and 
women's  formal  work  there  is  a  rigid  division.  Women 
do  not  enter  into  house-building  or  boat-building  ac- 
tivities, nor  go  out  in  fishing  canoes,  nor  may  men  enter 
the  formal  weaving  house  or  the  house  where  women 
are  making  tapa  in  a  group.     If  the  women's  work 

[84] 


THE  GIRL  IN  THE  COMMUNITY 

makes  it  necessary  for  them  to  cross  the  village,  as  is 
the  case  when  rubble  is  brough:  up  from  the  seashore 
to  make  the  floor  of  the  guest  house,  the  men  entirely 
disappear,  either  gathering  in  some  remote  house,  or 
going  away  to  the  bush  or  to  another  village.  But  this 
avoidance  is  only  for  large  formal  occasions.  If  her 
husband  is  building  the  family  a  new  cook-house,  a 
woman  may  make  tapa  two  feet  away,  while  a  chief 
may  sit  and  placidly  braid  cinet  while  his  wife  weaves 
a  fine  mat  at  his  elbow. 

So,  although   unlike   her  husband  and  brothers   a     n 
woman  spends  most  of  her  time  within  the  narrower      :\ 
circle  of  her  household  and  her  relationship  group, 
when  she  does  participate  in  community  affairs  she  is 
treated  with  the  punctilio  which  marks  all  phases  of 
Samoan  social  life.     The  better  part  of  her  attention 
and  interest  is  focused  on  a  smaller  group,  cast  in  a 
more  personal  mode.     For  this  reason,  it  is  impossible 
to  evaluate  accurately  the  difference  in  innate  social 
drive  between  men  and  women  in  Samoa.     In  those-i 
social  spheres  where  women  have  been  given  an  oppor-  I 
tunity,  they  take  their  place  with  as  much  ability  as  the  I 
men.     The  wives  of  the  talking  chiefs  in  fact  exhibit  | 
even  greater  adaptability  than  their  husbands.     The 
talking  chiefs  are  especially  chosen  for  their  oratorical 
and  intellectual  abilities,  whereas  the  women  have  a 
task  thrust  upon  them  at  their  marriage  requiring  great 
oratorical  skill,  a  fertile  imagination,  tact,  and  a  facile 
memory. 


[85] 


VII 

FORMAL   SEX    RELATIONS 

THE  first  attitude  which  a  little  girl  learns  towards 
boys  is  one  of  avoidance  and  antagonism.  She  learns 
to  observe  the  brother  and  sister  taboo  towards  the  boys 
of  her  relationship  group  and  household,  and  together 
v/ith  the  other  small  girls  of  her  age  group  she  treats 
all  other  small  boys  as  enemies  elect.  After  a  little 
girl  is  eight  or  nine  years  of  age  she  has  learned  never 
to  approach  a  group  of  older  boys.  This  feeling  of 
antagonism  towards  younger  boys  and  shamed  avoid- 
ance of  older  ones  continues  up  to  the  age  of  thirteen 
or  fourteen,  to  the  group  of  girls  who  are  just  reach- 
ing puberty  and  the  group  of  boys  who  have  just  been 
circumcised.  These  children  are  growing  away  from 
the  age-group  life  and  the  age-group  antagonisms. 
They  are  not  yet  actively  sex-eonscious.  And  it  is  at 
this  time  that  relationships  between  the  sexes  are  least 
emotionally  charged.  Not  until  she  is  an  old  married 
woman  with  several  children  will  the  Samoan  girl 
again  regard  the  opposite  sex  so  quietly.  When  these 
adolescent  children  gather  together  there  is  a  good- 
natured  banter,  a  minimum  of  embarrassment,  a  great 
deal  of  random  teasing  which  usually  takes  the  form 
of  accusing  some  little  girl  of  a  consuming  passion  for 

[86] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

a  decrepit  old  man  of  eighty,  or  some  small  boy  of 
being  the  father  of  a  buxom  matron's  eighth  child. 
Occasionally  the  banter  takes  the  form  of  attributing 
affection  between  two  age  mates  and  is  gaily  and  indig- 
nantly repudiated  by  both.  Children  at  this  age  meet 
at  informal  siva  parties,  on  the  outskirts  of  more  for- 
mal occasions,  at  community  reef  fishings  (when  many 
yards  of  reef  have  been  enclosed  to  make  a  great  fish 
trap)  and  on  torch-fishing  excursions.  Good-natured 
tussling  and  banter  and  co-operation  in  common  activi- 
ties are  the  keynotes  of  these  occasions.  But  unfortu- 
nately these  contacts  are  neither  frequent  nor  suffi- 
ciently prolonged  to  teach  the  girls  co-operation  or  to 
give  either  boys  or  girls  any  real  appreciation  of  per- 
sonality in  members  of  the  opposite  sex. 

Two  or  three  years  later  this  will  all  be  changed. 
The  fact  that  little  girls  no  longer  belong  to  age  groups 
makes  the  individual's  defection  less  noticeable.  The 
boy  who  begins  to  take  an  active  interest  in  girls  is  also 
seen  less  in  a  gang  and  spends  more  time  with  one  close 
companion.  Girls  have  lost  all  of  their  nonchalance. 
They  giggle,  blush,  bridle,  run  away.  Boys  become 
shy,  embarrassed,  taciturn,  and  avoid  the  society  of 
girls  in  the  daytime  and  on  the  brilliant  moonlit  nights 
for  which  they  accuse  the  girls  of  having  an  exhibition- 
istic  preference.  Friendships  fall  more  strictly  within 
the  relationship  group.  The  boy's  need  for  a  trusted 
confidante  is  stronger  than  that  of  the  girl,  for  only  the 
most  adroit  and  hardened  Don  Juans  do  their  own 

[87] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

courting.  There  are  occasions,  of  course,  when  two 
youngsters  just  past  adolescence,  fearful  of  ridicule, 
even  from  their  nearest  friends  and  relatives,  will  slip 
away  alone  into  the  bush.  More  frequently  still  an 
older  man,  a  widower  or  a  divorced  man,  will  be  a 
girl's  first  lover.  And  here  there  is  no  need  for  an 
ambassador.  The  older  man  is  neither  shy  nor  fright- 
ened, and  furthermore  there  is  no  one  whom  he  can 
trust  as  an  intermediary;  a  younger  man  would  betray 
hjm,  an  older  man  would  not  take  his  amours  seriously, 
j  But  the  first  spontaneous  experiment  of  adolescent  chil- 
/  dren  and  the  amorous  excursions  of  the  older  men 
among  the  young  girls  of  the  village  are  variants  on 
the  edge  of  the  recognised  types  of  relationships  j  so 
also  is  the  first  experience  of  a  young  boy  with  an  older 
woman.  But  both  of  these  are  exceedingly  frequent 
occurrences,  so  that  the  success  of  an  amatory  experience 
is  seldom  jeopardised  by  double  ignorance.  Neverthe- 
less, all  of  these  occasions  are  outside  the  recognised 
forms  into  which  sex  relations  fall.  The  little  boy  and 
girl  are  branded  by  their  companions  as  guilty  of 
tautala  lai  t'ltl  (presuming  above  their  ages)  as  is 
the  boy  who  loves  or  aspires  to  love  an  older  woman, 
while  the  idea  of  an  older  man  pursuing  a  young  girl 
appeals  strongly  to  their  sense  of  humour  j  or  if  the 
girl  is  very  young  and  naive,  to  their  sense  of  unfit- 
ness. "She  is  too  young,  too  young  yet.  He  is  too 
old,"  they  will  say,  and  the  whole  weight  of  vigorous 
disapproval  fell  upon  a  matal  who  was  known  to  be 

[88] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

the  father  of  the  child  of  Lotu,  the  sixteen-year-old 
feeble-minded  girl  on  Olesega.  Discrepancy  in  age  or 
experience  always  strikes  them  as  comic  or  pathetic  ac- 
cording to  the  degree.  The  theoretical  punishment 
which  is  meted  out  to  a  disobedient  and  runaway 
daughter  is  to  marry  her  to  a  very  old  man,  and  I 
have  heard  a  nine-year-old  giggle  contemptuously  over 
her  mother's  preference  for  a  seventeen-year-old  boy. 
Worst  among  these  unpatterned  deviations  is  that  of 
the  man  who  makes  love  to  some  young  and  dependent 
woman  of  his  household,  his  adopted  child  or  his  wife's 
younger  sister.  The  cry  of  incest  is  raised  against  him 
and  sometimes  feeling  runs  so  high  that  he  has  to  leave 
the  group. 

Besides  formal  marriage  there  are  only  two  types 
of  sex  relations  which  receive  any  formal  recognition 
from  the  community^love  affairs  between  unmarried 
young  people  (this  includes  the  widowed)  who  are  very 
nearly  of  the  same  age,  whether  leading  to  marriage  or 
merely  a  passing  diversion  j  and  adultery. 

Between  the  unmarried  there  are  three  forms  of 
relationship:  the  clandestine  encounter,  "under  the 
palm  trees,"  the  published  elopement,  Avaga,  and  the  ^ 
ceremonious  courtship  in  which  the  boy  "sits  before  the 
girl"}  and  on  the  edge  of  these,  the  curious  form  of 
surreptitious  rape,  called  nioetotoloy  sleep  crawling,  re- 
sorted to  by  youths  who  find  favour  in  no  maiden's 
eyes. 

In  these  three  relationships,  the  boy  requires  a  con- 

[89] 


./' 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

fidant  and  ambassador  whom  he  calls  a  soa.  Where 
boys  are  close  companions,  this  relationship  may  extend 
over  many  love  affairs,  or  it  may  be  a  temporary  one, 
terminating  with  the  particular  love  affair.  The  soa 
follows  the  pattern  of  the  talking  chief  who  makes 
material  demands  upon  his  chief  in  return  for  the  im- 
material services  which  he  renders  him.  If  marriage 
results  from  his  ambassadorship,  he  receives  a  specially 
fine  present  from  the  bridegroom.  The  choice  of  a 
soa  presents  many  difficulties.  If  the  lover  chooses  a 
steady,  reliable  boy,  some  slightly  younger  relative  de- 
voted to  his  interests,  a  boy  unambitious  in  affairs  of 
the  heart,  very  likely  the  ambassador  will  bungle  the 
whole  affair  through  inexperience  and  lack  of  tact.  But 
if  he  chooses  a  handsome  and  expert  wooer  who  knows 
just  how  "to  speak  softly  and  walk  gently,"  then  as 
likely  as  not  the  girl  will  prefer  the  second  to  the 
principal.  This  difficulty  is  occasionally  anticipated  by 
employing  two  or  three  soas  and  setting  them  to  spy 
on  each  other.  But  such  a  lack  of  trust  is  likely  to  in- 
spire a  similar  attitude  in  the  agents,  and  as  one  over- 
cautious and  disappointed  lover  told  me  ruefully,  "I 
had  five  soasy  one  was  true  and  four  were  false." 

Among  possible  soas  there  are  two  preferences,  a 
brother  or  a  girl.  .  A  brother  is  by  definition  loyal, 
while  a  girl  is  far  more  skilful  for  "a  boy  can  only 
approach  a  girl  in  the  evening,  or  when  no  one  is  by, 
but  a  girl  can  go  with  her  all  day  long,  walk  with  her 
and  lie  on  the  mat  by  her,  eat  off  the  same  platter,  and 

[90] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

whisper  between  mouthfuls  the  name  of  the  boy,  speak- 
ing ever  of  him,  how  good  he  is,  how  gentle  and  how 
true,  how  worthy  of  love.  Yes,  best  of  all  is  the 
soafafiney  the  woman  ambassador."  But  the  difficulties 
of  obtaining  a  soafafine  are  great.  A  boy  may  not^ 
choose  from  his  own  female  relatives.  The  taboo  for- 
bids him  ever  to  mention  such  matters  in  their  pres- 
ence. It  is  only  by  good  chance  that  his  brother's 
sweetheart  may  be  a  relative  of  the  girl  upon  whom 
he  has  set  his  heart  j  or  some  other  piece  of  good  for- 
tune may  throw  him  into  contact  with  a  girl  or  woman 
who  will  act  in  his  interests.  The  most  violent  antago- 
nisms in  the  young  people's  groups  are  not  between  ex- 
lovers,  arise  not  from  the  venom  of  the  deserted  nor  the 
smarting  pride  of  the  jilted,  but  occur  between  the  boy 
and  the  soa  who  has  betrayed  him,  or  a  lover  and  the 
friend  of  his  beloved  who  has  in  any  way  blocked  his 
suit. 

In  the  strictly  clandestine  love  affair  the  lover  never 
presents  himself  at  the  house  of  his  beloved.  His  soa 
may  go  there  in  a  group  or  upon  some  trumped-up 
errand,  or  he  also  may  avoid  the  house  and  find  op- 
portunities to  speak  to  the  girl  while  she  is  fishing  or 
going  to  and  from  the  plantation.  It  is  his  task  to  sing 
his  friend's  praise,  counteract  the  girl's  fears  and  ob- 
jections, and  finally  appoint  a  rendezvous.  These  af- 
fairs are  usually  of  short  duration  and  both  boy  and 
girl  may  be  carrying  on  several  at  once.  One  of  the 
recognised  causes  of  a  quarrel  is  the  resentment  of  the 

[91] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

first  lover  against  his  successor  of  the  same  night,  "for 
the  boy  who  came  later  will  mock  him."  These  clan- 
destine lovers  make  their  rendezvous  on  the  outskirts 
of  the  village.  "Under  the  palm  trees"  is  the  conven- 
tionalised designation  of  this  type  of  intrigue.  Very 
often  three  or  four  couples  will  have  a  common  ren- 
dezvous, when  either  the  boys  or  the  girls  are  relatives 
who  are  friends.  Should  the  girl  ever  grow  faint  or 
dizzy,  it  is  the  boy's  part  to  climb  the  nearest  palm  and 
fetch  down  a  fresh  cocoanut  to  pour  on  her  face  in  lieu 
of  eau  de  cologne.  In  native  theory,  barrenness  is  the 
punishment  of  promiscuity  j  and,  vice  versa,  only  per- 
sistent monogamy  is  rewarded  by  conception.  When 
a  pair  of  clandestine  experimenters  whose  rank  is  so 
low  that  their  marriages  are  not  of  any  great  economic 
importance  become  genuinely  attached  to  each  other 
and  maintain  the  relationship  over  several  months,  mar- 
riage often  follows.  And  native  sophistication  distin- 
guishes between  the  adept  lover  whose  adventures  are 
many  and  of  short  duration  and  the  less  skilled  man 
who  can  find  no  better  proof  of  his  virility  than  a  long 
affair  ending  in  conception. 

Often  the  girl  is  afraid  to  venture  out  into  the  night, 
infested  with  ghosts  and  devils,  ghosts  that  strangle 
one,  ghosts  from  far-away  villages  who  come  in  canoes 
to  kidnap  the  girls  of  the  village,  ghosts  who  leap  upon 
the  back  and  may  not  be  shaken  off.  Or  she  may  feel 
that  it  is  wiser  to  remain  at  home,  and  if  necessary, 
attest  her  presence  vocally.     In  this  case  the  lover 

[92] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

braves  the  house  j  taking  off  his  lavalava,  he  greases 
his  body  thoroughly  with  cocoanut  oil  so  that  he  can 
slip  through  the  fingers  of  pursuers  and  leave  no  trace, 
and  stealthily  raises  the  blinds  and  slips  into  the  house. 
The  prevalence  of  this  practice  gives  point  to  the  fa- 
miliar incident  in  Polynesian  folk  tales  of  the  ill  for- 
tune that  falls  the  luckless  hero  who  "sleeps  until 
morning,  until  the  rising  sun  reveals  his  presence  to 
the  other  inmates  of  the  house."  As  perhaps  a  dozen 
or  more  people  and  several  dogs  are  sleeping  in  the 
house,  a  due  regard  for  silence  is  sufficient  precaution. 
But  it  is  this  habit  of  domestic  rendezvous  which  lends  .  y 
itself  to  the  peculiar  abuse  of  the  moetotoloy  or  sleep 
crawler. 

The  moetotolo  is  the  only  sex  activity  which  presents 
a  definitely  abnormal  picture.      Ever  since  the   first 
contact  with  white  civilisation,  rape,  in  the  form  of  vio-  -' 
lent  assault,  has  occurred  occasionally  in  Samoa.     It  is 
far  less  congenial,  however,  to  the  Samoan  attitude 
than  moetotoloy  in  which  a  man  stealthily  appropriates 
the  favours  which  are  meant  for  another.     The  need 
for  guarding  against  discovery  makes  conversation  im- 
possible, and  the  sleep  crawler  relies  upon  the  girPs 
expecting  a  lover  or  the  chance  that  she  will  indiscrimi- 
nately accept  any  comer.     If  the  girl  suspects  and  re- 
sents him,  she  raises  a  great  outcry  and  the  whole 
household  gives  chase.  fCatching  a  moetotolo  is  countedji 
great  sport,  and  the  women,  who  feel  their  safety  en- |^ 
dangered,  are  even  more  active  in  pursuit  than  the  i 

[93] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

men.  One  luckless  youth  in  Luma  neglected  to  re- 
move his  lavalava.  The  girl  discovered  him  and  her 
sister  succeeded  in  biting  a  piece  out  of  his  lavalava 
before  he  escaped.  This  she  proudly  exhibited  the 
next  day.  As  the  boy  had  been  too  dull  to  destroy  his 
lavalava,  the  evidence  against  him  was  circumstantial 
and  he  was  the  laughing  stock  of  the  village  j  the  chil- 
dren wrote  a  dance  song  about  it  and  sang  it  after  him 
wherever  he  went.  The  moetotolo  problem  is  compli- 
cated by  the  possibility  that  a  boy  of  the  household 
may  be  the  offender  and  may  take  refuge  in  the  hue 
and  cry  following  the  discovery.  It  also  provides  the 
girl  with  an  excellent  alibi,  since  she  has  only  to  call 
out  "moetotolo^^  in  case  her  lover  is  discovered.  "To 
the  family  and  the  village  that  may  be  a  moetotoloy 
but  it  is  not  so  in  the  hearts  of  the  girl  and  the  boy." 
Two.  motives  a,re  given  for  this  unsavoury  activity, 
anger  and  failure  in  love.  The  Samoan  girl  who  plays 
the  coquette  does  so  at  her  peril.  "She  will  say,  *Yes, 
I  will  meet  you  to-night  by  that  old  cocoanut  tree  just 
beside  the  devilfish  stone  when  the  moon  goes  down.' 
And  the  boy  will  wait  and  wait  and  wait  all  night  long. 
It  will  grow  very  darkj  lizards  will  drop  on  his  head; 
the  ghost  boats  will  come  into  the  channel.  He  will 
be  very  much  afraid.  But  he  will  wait  there  until 
dawn,  until  his  hair  is  wet  with  dew  and  his  heart  is 
very  angry  and  still  she  does  not  come.  Then  in  re- 
venge he  will  attempt  a  moetotolo.  Especially  will  he 
do  so  if  he  hears  that  she  has  met  another  that  night." 

[94] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

The  other  set  explanation  is  that  a  particular  boy  can- 
not win  a  sweetheart  by  any  legitimate  means,  and  there 
is  no  form  of  prostitution,  except  guest  prostitution  in 
Samoa.  As  some  of  the  boys  who  were  notorious 
7noetotolos  were  among  the  most  charming  and  good- 
looking  youths  of  the  village,  this  is  a  little  hard  to 
understand.  Apparently,  these  youths,  frowned  upon 
in  one  or  two  tentative  courtships,  inflamed  by  the 
loudly  proclaimed  success  of  their  fellows  and  the 
taunts  against  their  own  inexperience,  cast  established 
wooing  procedure  to  the  winds  and  attempt  a  moeto- 
tolo.  And  once  caught,  once  branded,  no  girl  will  ever 
pay  any  attention  to  them  again.  They  must  wait  until 
as  older  men,  with  position  and  title  to  offer,  they  can 
choose  between  some  weary  and  bedraggled  wanton  or 
the  unwilling  young  daughter  of  ambitious  and  selfish 
parents.  But  years  will  intervene  before  this  is  pos- 
sible, and  shut  out  from  the  amours  in  which  his  com- 
panions are  engaging,  a  boy  makes  one  attempt  after 
another,  sometimes  successfully,  sometimes  only  to  be 
caught  and  beaten,  mocked  by  the  village,  and  always 
digging  the  pit  deeper  under  his  feet.  Often  par- 
tially satisfactory  solutions  are  relationships  with  men. 
There  was  one  such  pair  in  the  village,  a  notorious 
tnoetotoloy  and  a  serious-minded  youth  who  wished  to 
keep  his  heart  free  for  political  intrigue.  The  moeto- 
tolo  therefore  complicates  and  adds  zest  to  the  surrep- 
titious love-making  which  is  conducted  at  home,  while 
the  danger  of  being  missed,  the  undesirability  of  chance 

[95] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

encounters  abroad,  rain  and  the  fear  of  ghosts,  com- 
plicate "love  under  the  palm  trees." 
.♦  Between  these  strictly  suh  rosa  affairs  and  a  final  offer 
of  marriage  there  is  an  intermediate  form  of  courtship 
in  which  the  girl  is  called  upon  by  the  boy.  As  this  is^ 
regarded  as  a  tentative  move  towards  matrimony,  both 
relationship  groups  must  be  more  or  less  favourably 
inclined  towards  the  union.  With  his  soa  at  his  side 
and  provided  with  a  basket  of  fish,  an  octopus  or  so,  or  a 
chicken,  the  suitor  presents  himself  at  the  girPs  home 
before  the  late  evening  meal.  If  his  gift  is  accepted, 
it  is  a  sign  that  the  family  of  the  girl  are  willing  for 
him  to  pay  his  addresses  to  her.  He  is  formally  wel- 
comed by  the  mata'ty  sits  with  reverently  bowed  head 
throughout  the  evening  prayer,  and  then  he  and  his  soa 
stay  for  supper.  But  the  suitor  does  not  approach  his 
beloved.  They  say:  "If  you  wish  to  know  who  is  really 
the  lover,  look  then  not  at  the  boy  who  sits  by  her  side, 
looks  boldly  into  her  eyes  and  twists  the  flowers  in  her 
necklace  around  his  fingers  or  steals  the  hibiscus  flower 
from  her  hair  that  he  may  wear  it  behind  his  ear.  Do 
not  think  it  is  he  who  whispers  softly  in  her  ear,  or  says 
to  her,  ^Sweetheart,  wait  for  me  to-night.  After  the 
moon  has  set,  I  will  come  to  you,'  or  who  teases  her  by 
saying  she  has  many  lovers.  Look  instead  at  the  boy 
who  sits  afar  off,  who  sits  with  bent  head  and  takes  no 
part  in  the  joking.  And  you  will  see  that  his  eyes  are 
always  turned  softly  on  the  girl.  Always  he  watches 
her  and  never  does  he  miss  a  movement  of  her  lips. 

[96] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

Perhaps  she  will  wink  at  him,  perhaps  she  will  raise  her 
eyebrows,  perhaps  she  will  make  a  sign  with  her  hand. 
He  must  always  be  wakeful  and  watching  or  he  will 
miss  it."  The  soa  meanwhile  pays  the  girl  elaborate 
and  ostentatious  court  and  in  undertones  pleads  the 
cause  of  his  friend.  After  dinner,  the  centre  of  the 
house  is  accorded  the  young  people  to  play  cards,  sing 
or  merely  sit  about,  exchanging  a  series  of  broad 
pleasantries.  This  type  of  courtship  varies  from  occa- 
sional calls  to  daily  attendance.  The  food  gift  need  not 
.  ac£aCQj3any...Xach  y]sit,  but  is  as  essential  at  the  initial 
call  as  is  an  introduction  in  the  West.  The  way  of  such 
declared  lovers  is  hard.  The  girl  does  not  wish  to 
marry,  nor  to  curtail  her  amours  in  deference  to  a 
definite  betrothal.  Possibly  she  may  also  dislike  her 
suitor,  while  he  in  turn  may  be  the  victim  of  family 
ambition.  Now  that  the  whole  village  knows  him  for 
her  suitor,  the  girl  gratifies  her  vanity  by  avoidance, 
by  perverseness.  He  comes  in  the  evening,  she  has  gone 
to  another  house  j  he  follows  her  there,  she  immediately 
returns  home.  When  such  courtship  ripens  into  an 
accepted  proposal  of  marriage,  the  boy  often  goes  to 
sleep  in  the  house  of  his  intended  bride  and  often  the 
union  is  surreptitiously  consummated.  vTeremonial  mar- 
riage is  deferred  until  such  time  as  the  boy's  family— ^-^ 
have  planted  or  collected  enough  food  and  other  prop/  ' 
erty  and  the  girl's  family  have  gotten  together  a  suitable 
dowry  of  tapa  and  mats.  >J 

In  such  manner  are  conducted  the  love  affairs  of  the 

[97] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

average  young  pecrple  of  the  same  village,  and  of  the 
plebeian  young  people  of  neighbouring  villages.  From 
this  free  and  easy  experimentation,  the  taufo  Is  ex- 
cepted. Virginity  is  a  legal  requirement  for  Ker.  At 
her  marriage,  in  front  of  all  the  people,  in  a  house  bril- 
liantly lit,  the  talking  chief  of  the  bridegroom  will  take 
the  tokens  of  her  virginity.*  In  former  days  should 
bhe  prove  not  to  be  a  virgin,  her  female  relatives  fell 
upon  and  beat  her  with  stones,  disfiguring  and  some- 
times fatally  injuring  the  girl  who  had  shamed  their 
house.  The  public  ordeal  sometimes  prostrated  the  girl 
for  as  much  as  a  week,  although  ordinarily  a  girl  re- 
covers from  first  intercourse  in  two  or  three  hours,  and 
women  seldom  lie  abed  more  than  a  few  hours  after 
childbirth.  Although  this  virginity-testing  ceremony 
was  theoretically  observed  at  weddings  of  people  of  all 
ranks,  it  was  simply  ignored  if  the  boy  knew  that  it  was 
an  idle  form,  and  "a  wise  girl  who  is  not  a  virgin  will 
tell  the  talking  chief  of  her  husband,  so  that  she  be 
not  shamed  before  all  the  people." 

The  attitude  towards  virginity  is  a  curious  one. 
Christianity  has,  of  course,  introduced  a  moral  premium 
on  chastity.  The  Samoans  regard  this  attitude  with 
reverent  but  complete  scepticism  and  the  concept  of 
celibacy  is  absolutely  meaningless  to  them.  But  vir- 
ginity definitely  adds  to  a  girl's  attractiveness,  the  woo- 
ing of  a  virgin  Is  considered  far  more  of  a  feat  than 

*  This  custom  is  now  forbidden  by  law,  but  is  only  gradually 
dying  out. 

[98] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

the  conquest  of  a  more  experienced  heart,  and  a  really 
successful  Don  Juan  turns  most  of  his  attention  to  their 
seduction.  One  youth  who  at  twenty-four  married  a 
girl  who  was  still  a  virgin  was  the  laughing  stock  of  the 
village  over  his  freely  related  trepidation  which  re- 
vealed the  fact  that  at  twenty-four,  although  he  had 
had  many  love  affairs,  he  had  never  before  won  the 
favours  of  a  virgin. 

The  bridegroom,  his  relatives  and  the  bride  and  her 
relatives  all  receive  prestige  if  she  proves  to  be  a  virgin, 
so  that  the  girl  of  rank  who  might  wish  to  forestall  this 
painful  public  ceremony  is  thwarted  not  only  by  the 
anxious  chaperonage  of  her  relatives  but  by  the  boy's 
eagerness  for  prestige.  One  young  Lothario  eloped 
to  his  father's  house  with  a  girl  of  high  rank  from  an- 
other village  and  refused  to  live  with  her  because,  said 
he,  "I  thought  maybe  I  would  marry  that  girl  and 
there  would  be  a  big  nialaga  and  a  big  ceremony  and  I 
would  wait  and  get  the  credit  for  marrying  a  virgin. 
But  the  next  day  her  father  came  and  said  that  she  could 
not  marry  me,  and  she  cried  very  much.  So  I  said  to 
her,  *Well,  there  is  no  use  now  to  wait  any  longer. 
Now  we  will  run  away  into  the  bush.'  "  It  is  con- 
ceivable that  the  girl  would  often  trade  the  temporary 
prestige  for  an  escape  from  the  public  ordeal,  but  in 
proportion  as  his  ambitions  were  honourable^  the  boy 
would  frustrate  her  efforts. 

Just  as  the  clandestine  and  casual  "love  under  the 
palm  trees"  is  the  pattern  irregularity  for  those  of  hum- 

[99] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ble  birth,  so  the  elopement  has  its  archetype  in  the  love 
affairs  of  the  taufOy  and  the  other  chiefs'  daughters. 
These  girls  of  noble  birth  are  carefully  guarded  j  not 
for  them  are  secret  trysts  at  night  or  stolen  meetings 
in  the  day  time.  Where  parents  of  lower  rank  com- 
placently ignore  their  daughters'  experiments,  the  high 
chief  guards  his  daughter's  virginity  as  he  guards  the 
honour  of  his  name,  his  precedence  in  the  kava  cere- 
mony or  any  other  prerogative  of  his  high  degree. 
Some  old  woman  of  the  household  is  told  off  to  be 
the  girl's  constant  companion  and  duenna.  The  taufo 
may  not  visit  in  other  houses  in  the  village,  or  leave 
the  house  alone  at  night.  When  she  sleeps,  an  older 
woman  sleeps  by  her  side.  Never  may  she  go  to  an- 
other village  unchaperoned.  In  her  own  village  she 
goes  soberly  about  her  tasks,  bathing  in  the  sea,  work- 
ing in  the  plantation,  safe  under  the  jealous  guardian- 
ship of  the  women  of  her  own  village.  She  runs  little 
risk  from  the  moetotolo,  for.  one  who  outraged  the 
tau-po  of  his  village  would  formerly  have  been  beaten 
to  death,  and  now  would  have  to  flee  from  the  vil- 
lage. The  prestige  of  the  village  is  inextricably  bound 
up  with  the  high  repute  of  the  taufo  and  few  young 
men  in  the  village  would  dare  to  be  her  lovers.  Mar- 
riage to  them  is  out  of  the  question,  and  their  com- 
panions would  revile  them  as  traitors  rather  than  envy 
them  such  doubtful  distinction.  Occasionally  a  youth 
of  very  high  rank  in  the  same  village  will  risk  an 
elopement,  but  even  this  is  a  rare  occurrence.     For 

[lOo] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

tradition  says  that  the  taupo  must  marry  outside  her 
village,  marry  a  high  chief  or  a  mana'ia  of  another  vil- 
lage. Such  a  marriage  is  an  occasion  for  great  festivi- 
ties and  solemn  ceremony.  The  chief  and  all  of  his 
talking  chiefs  must  come  to  propose  for  her  hand,  come 
in  person  bringing  gifts  for  her  talking  chiefs.  If  the 
talking  chiefs  of  the  girl  are  satisfied  that  this  is  a 
lucrative  and  desirable  match,  and  the  family  are  satis- 
fied with  the  rank  and  appearance  of  the  suitor,  the^ 
marriage  is  agreed  upon.  Little  attention  is  paid  to  the 
opinion  of  the  girl.  So  fixed  is  the  idea  that  the  mar- 
riage of  the  taufo  is  the  affair  of  the  talking  chiefs  that 
Europeanised  natives  on  the  main  island,  refuse  to 
make  their  daughters  taufos  because  the  missionaries 
say  a  girl  should  make  her  own  choice,  and  once  she  is 
a  taupOj  they  regard  the  matter  as  inevitably  taken  out 
of  their  hands.  After  the  betrothal  is  agreed  upon  the 
bridegroom  returns  to  his  village  to  collect  food  and 
property  for  the  wedding.  His  village  sets  aside  a 
piece  of  land  which  is  called  the  "Place  of  the  Lady" 
and  is  her  property  and  the  property  of  her  children 
forever,  and  on  this  land  they  build  a  house  for  the 
bride.  Meanwhile,  the  bridegroom  has  left  behind  him 
in  the  house  of  the  bride,  a  talking  chief,  the  counter- 
part of  the  humbler  soa.  This  is  one  of  the  talking 
chief's  best  opportunities  to  acquire  wealth.  He  stays 
as  the  emissary  of  his  chief,  to  watch  over  his  future 
bride.  He  works  for  the  bride's  family  and  each  week 
the  matai  of  the  bride  must  reward  him  with  a  hand- 

[lOlJ 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

some  present.  As  an  affianced  wife  of  a  chief,  more  and 
more  circumspect  conduct  is  enjoined  upon  the  girl. 
Did  she  formerly  joke  with  the  boys  of  the  village,  she 
must  joke  no  longer,  or  the  talking  chief,  on  the  watch 
for  any  lapse  from  high  decorum,  will  go  home  to  his 
chief  and  report  that  his  bride  is  unworthy  of  such  hon- 
our. This  custom  is  particularly  susceptible  to  second 
thought  on  the  part  of  either  side.  Does  the  bride- 
groom repent  of  the  bargain,  he  bribes  his  talking  chief 
(who  is  usually  a  young  man,  not  one  of  the  important 
talking  chiefs  who  will  benefit  greatly  by  the  marriage 
itself)  to  be  oversensitive  to  the  behaviour  of  the  bride 
or  the  treatment  he  receives  in  the  bride's  family.  And 
this  is  the  time  in  which  the  bride  will  elope,  if  her 
affianced  husband  is  too  unacceptable.  For  while  no 
boy  of  her  own  village  will  risk  her  dangerous  favours, 
a  boy  from  another  village  will  enormously  enhance 
his  prestige  if  he  elopes  with  the  taufo  of  a  rival  com- 
munity. Once  she  has  eloped,  the  projected  alliance  is 
of  course  broken  off,  although  her  angry  parents  may 
refuse  to  sanction  her  marriage  with  her  lover  and 
marry  her  for  punishment  to  some  old  man. 

So  great  is  the  prestige  won  by  the  village,  one  of 
whose  young  men  succeeds  in  eloping  with  a  tau-po,  that 
often  the  whole  effort  of  a  malaga  is  concentrated  upon 
abducting  the  taupo,  whose  virginity  will  be  respected 
in  direct  ratio  to  the  chances  of  her  family  and  village 
consenting  to  ratify  the  marriage.    As  the  abductor  is 

[102] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

often  of  high  rank,  the  village  often  ruefully  accepts 
the  compromise. 

This  elopement  pattern,  given  meaning  by  the  re- 
strictions under  which  the  taupo  lives  and  this  inter- 
village  rivalry,  is  carried  down  to  the  lower  ranks  where 
indeed  it  is  practically  meaningless.  Seldom  is  the 
chaperonage  exercised  over  the  girl  of  average  family 
severe  enough  to  make  elopement  the  only  way  of  con- 
summating a  love  affair.  But  the  elopement  is  spec- 
tacular; the  boy  wishes  to  increase  his  reputation  as  a 
successful  Don  Juan,  and  the  girl  wishes  to  proclaim 
her  conquest  and  also  often  hopes  that  the  elopement 
will  end  in  marriage.  The  eloping  pair  run  away  to 
the  parents  of  the  boy  or  to  some  of  his  relatives  and 
wait  for  the  girl's  relatives  to  pursue  her.  As  one  boy 
related  the»tale  of  such  an  adventure:  "We  ran  away  in 
the  rain,  nine  miles  to  Leone,  in  the  pouring  rain,  to  my 
father's  house.  The  next  day  her  family  came  to  get 
her,  and  my  father  said  to  me,  *How  is  it,  do  you  wish 
to  marry  this  girl,  shall  I  ask  her  father  to  leave  her  ^ 
here?'  And  I  said,  *Oh,  no.  I  just  eloped  with  her  forJ^pV\ 
public  information.'  "  Elopements  are  much  less  fre-' 
quent  than  the  clandestine  love  affairs  because  the  girl 
takes  far  more  risk.  She  publicly  renounces  her  often  ]? 
nominal  claims  to  virginity;  she  embroils  herself  with  j, 
her  family,  who  in  former  times,  and  occasionally  even 
to-day,  would  beat  her  soundly  and  shave  off  her  hair. 
Nine  times  out  of  ten,  her  lover's  only  motive  is  vanity 

[103] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

2jid  display,  for  the  boy's  say,  "The  girls  hate  a  moeto- 
toloy  but  they  all  love  an  avaga  (eloping)  man." 

The  elopement  also  occurs  as  a  practical  measure 
when  one  family  is  opposed  to  a  marriage  upon  which 
a  pair  of  young  people  have  determined.  The  young 
people  take  refuge  with  the  friendly  side  of  the  family. 
But  unless  the  recalcitrant  family  softens  and  consents 
to  legalise  the  marriage  by  a  formal  exchange  of  prop- 
erty, the  principals  can  do  nothing  to  establish  their 
status.  A  young  couple  may  have  had  several  children 
and  still  be  classed  as  "elopers,"  and  if  the  marriage  is 
finally  legalised  after  long  delay,  this  stigma  will 
always  cling  to  them.  It  is  far  more  serious  a  one  than 
a  mere  accusation  of  sexual  irregularity,  for  there  is  a 
definite  feeling  that  the  whole  community  procedure 
has  been  outraged  by  a  pair  of  young  upstarts. 

Reciprocal  gift-giving  relations  are  maintained  be- 
^  tween  the  two  families  as  long  as  the  marriage  lasts,  and 
leven  afterwards  if  there  are  children.  The  birth  of 
each  child,  the  death  of  a  member  of  either  household, 
a  visit  of  the  wife  to  her  family,  or  if  he  lives  with  her 
people,  of  the  husband  to  his,  is  marked  by  the  presenta- 
tion of  gifts. 

In  premarital  relationships,  a  convention  of  love 
making  is  strictly  adhered  to.  True,  this  is  a  convention 
of  speech,  rather  than  of  action.  A  boy  declares  that  he 
will  die  if  a  girl  refuses  him  her  favours,  but  the  Sa- 
moans  laugh  at  stories  of  romantic  love,  scoff  at  fidelity 
to  a  long  absent  wife  or  mistress,  believe  explicitly  that 

[104] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

one  love  will  quickly  cure  another.  The  fidelity  which 
is  followed  by  pregnancy  is  taken  as  proof  positive  of 
a  real  attachment,  although  having  many  mistresses  is 
never  out  of  harmony  with  a  declaration  of  affection 
for  each.  The  composition  of  ardent  love  songs,  the 
fashioning  of  long  and  flowery  love  letters,  the  invoca- 
tion of  the  moon,  the  stars  and  the  sea  in  verbal  court- 
ship, all  serve  to  give  Samoan  love-making  a  close 
superficial  resemblance  to  our  own,  yet  the  attitude  is 
far  closer ^o  that  of  Schnitzler's  hero  in  The  Ajfairs  of 
Anatol.  pRomantic  love  as  it  occurs  in  our  civilisation, 
inextricabty  bound  up  with  ideas  of  monogamy,  ex- 
clusiveness,  jealousy  and  undeviating  fidelity  does  not 
occur  in  Samoa.)  Our  attitude  is  a  compound,  the  final 
result  of  many  converging  lines  of  development  in 
Western  civilisation,  of  the  institution  of  monogamy, 
of  the  ideas  of  the  age  of  chivalry,  of  the  ethics  of  ^ 
Christianity.  Even  a  passionate  attachment  to  one  per- 
son which  lasts  for  a  long  period  and  persists  in  the  face  i 
of  discouragement  but  does  not  bar  out  other  relation- 
ships, is  rare  among  the  Samoans.  Marriage,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  regarded  as  a  social  and  economic  ar-  / 
rangement,  in  which  relative  wealth,  rank,  and  skill  of 
husband  and  wife,  all  must  be  taken  into  consideration. 
There  are  many  marriages  in  which  both  individuals, 
especially  if  they  are  over  thirty,  are  completely  faith- 
ful. But  this  must  be  attributed  to  the  ease  of  sexual 
adjustment  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  ascendency  of 
other  interests,  social  organisation  for  the  men,  children 

[i05l 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

for  the  women,  over  sex  interests,  rather  than  to  a  pas- 
sionate fixation  upon  the  partner  in  the  marriage.  As 
the  Samoans  lack  the  inhibitions  and  the  intricate  spe- 
cialisation of  sex  feeling  which  make  marriages  of  con- 
venience unsatisfactory,  it  is  possible  to  bulwark  marital 
happiness  with  other  props  than  temporary  passionate 
devotion.  Suitability  and  expediency  become  the  de- 
ciding factors. 

Adultery  does  not  necessarily  mean  a  broken  mar- 
riage. A  chief's  wife  who  commits  adultery  is  deemed 
to  have  dishonoured  her  high  position,  and  is  usually 
discarded,  although  the  chief  will  openly  resent  her  re- 
marriage to  any  one  of  lower  rank.  If  the  lover  is  con- 
sidered the  more  culpable,  the  village  will  take  public 
vengeance  upon  him.  In  less  conspicuous  cases  the 
amount  of  fuss  which  is  made  over  adultery  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  relative  rank  of  the  offender  and 
offended,  or  the  personal  jealousy  which  is  only  occa- 
sionally aroused.  If  either  the  injured  husband  or  the 
injured  wife  is  sufficiently  incensed  to  threaten  physical 
violence,  the  trespasser  may  have  to  resort  to  a  public 
ifoga,  the  ceremonial  humiliation  before  some  one 
whose  pardon  is  asked.  He  goes  to  the  house  of  the 
man  he  has  injured,  accompanied  by  all  the  men  of  his 
household,  each  one  wrapped  in  a  fine  mat,  the  currency 
of  the  country  J  the  suppliants  seat  themselves  outside 
the  house,  fine  mats  spread  over  their  heads,  hands 
folded  on  their  breasts,  heads  bent  in  attitudes  of  the 
deepest  dejection  and  humiliation.    "And  if  the  man  is 

[io6] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

very  angry  he  will  say  no  word.  All  day  he  will  go 
about  his  business  j  he  will  braid  cinet  with  a  quick  hand, 
he  will  talk  loudly  to  his  wife,  and  call  out  greetings  to 
those  who  pass  in  the  roadway,  but  he  will  take  no 
notice  of  those  who  sit  on  his  own  terrace,  who  dare  not 
raise  their  eyes  or  make  any  movement  to  go  away.  In 
olden  days,  if  his  heart  was  not  softened,  he  might  take 
a  club  and  together  with  his  relatives  go  out  and  kill 
those  who  sit  without.  But  now  he  only  keeps  them 
waiting,  waiting  all  day  long.  The  sun  will  beat  down 
upon  them  J  the  rain  will  come  and  beat  on  their  heads 
and  still  he  will  say  no  word.  Then  towards  evening  he 
will  say  at  last:  *Come,  it  is  enough.  Enter  the  house 
and  drink  the  kava.  Eat  the  food  which  I  will  set 
before  you  and  we  will  cast  our  trouble  into  the  sea.' " 
Then  the  fine  mats  are  accepted  as  payment  for  the  in- 
jury, the  ifoga  becomes  a  matter  of  village  history  and 
old  gossips  will  say,  "Oh,  yes,  Lua !  no,  she's  not  lona's 
child.  Her  father  is  that  chief  over  in  the  next  village. 
He  ifod  to  lona  before  she  was  born."  If  the  offender 
is  of  much  lower  rank  than  the  injured  husband,  his 
chief,  or  his  father  (if  he  is  only  a  young  boy)  will  have 
to  humiliate  himself  in  his  place.  Where  the  offender 
is  a  woman,  she  and  her  female  relatives  will  make 
similar  amends.  But  they  will  run  far  greater  danger 
of  being  roundly  beaten  and  berated  j  the  peaceful 
teachings  of  Christianity — perhaps  because  they  were 
directed  against  actual  killing,  rather  than  the  slightly 
less  fatal  encounters  of  women — have  made  far  less 

[107] 


'     COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

change  in  the  belligerent  activities  of  the  women  than 
in  those  of  the  men. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  wife  really  tires  of  her  hus- 
band, or  a  husband  of  his  wife,  divorce  is  a  simple  and 
informal  matter,  the  non-resident  simply  going  home  to 
his  or  her  family,  and  the  relationship  is  said  to  have 
"passed  away."  It  is  a  very  brittle  monogamy,  often 
trespassed  and  more  often  broken  entirely.  But  many 
adulteries  occur — ^between  a  young  marriage-shy  bache- 
lor and  a  married  woman,  or  a  temporary  widower  and 
some  young  girl — which  hardly  threaten  the  continuity 
of  established  relationships.  The  claim  that  a  woman 
has  on  her  family's  land  renders  her  as  independent  as 
her  husband,  and  so  there  are  no  marriages  of  any  dura- 
tion in  which  either  person  is  actively  unhappy.  A  tiny 
flare-up  and  a  woman  goes  home  to  her  own  people  j 
if  her  husband  does  not  care  to  conciliate  her,  each  seeks 
another  mate. 

Within  the  family,  the  wife  obeys  and  serves  her 
husband,  in  theory,  though  of  course,  the  hen-pecked 
husband  is  a  frequent  phenomenon.  In  families  of 
high  rank,  her  personal  service  to  her  husband  is  taken 
over  by  the  taupo  and  the  talking  chief  but  the  wife 
always  retains  the  right  to  render  a  high  chief  sacred 
personal  services,  such  as  cutting  his  hair.  A  wife's 
rank  can  never  exceed  her  husband's  because  it  is  always 
directly  dependent  upon  it.  Her  family  may  be  richer 
and  more  illustrious  than  his,  and  she  may  actually  exer- 
cise more  influence  over  the  village  affairs  through  her 

[io8] 


FORMAL  SEX  RELATIONS 

blood  relatives  than  he,  but  within  the  life  of  the  house- 
hold and  the  village,  she  is  a  lausiy  wife  of  a  talking 
chief,  or  a  faletua,  wife  of  a  chief.  This  sometimes 
results  in  conflict,  as  in  the  case  of  Pusa  who  was  the 
sister  of  the  last  holder  of  the  highest  title  on  the 
island.  This  title  was  temporarily  extinct.  She  was 
also  the  wife  of  the  highest  chief  in  the  village.  Should 
her  brother,  the  heir,  resume  the  higher  title,  her  hus- 
band's rank  and  her  rank  as  his  wife  would  suffer. 
Helping  her  brother  meant  lowering  the  prestige  of 
her  husband.  As  she  was  the  type  of  woman  who  cared 
a  great  deal  more  for  wire  pulling  than  for  public  recog- 
nition, she  threw  her  influence  in  for  her  brother.  Such 
conflicts  are  not  uncommon,  but  they  present  a  clear-cut 
choice,  usually  reinforced  by  considerations  of  residence. 
If  a  woman  lives  in  her  husband's  household,  and 
if,  furthermore,  that  household  is  in  another  village,  her 
interest  is  mainly  enlisted  in  her  husband's  cause  j  but 
if  she  lives  with  her  own  family,  in  her  own  village,  her 
allegiance  is  likely  to  cling  to  the  blood  relatives  from 
whom  she  receives  reflected  glory  and  informal  privi- 
lege, although  no  status. 


[109] 


VIII 

THE    ROLE    OF    THE    DANCE 

DANCING  is  the  only  activity  In  which  almost  all  ages 
and  both  sexes  participate  and  it  therefore  offers  a 
unique  opportunity  for  an  analysis  of  educatipn. 

In  the  dance  there  are  virtuosos  but  no  formal  teach- 
ers. It  is  a  highly  individual  activity  set  in  a  social 
framework.  This  framework  varies  from  a  small  danc- 
ing party  at  which  twelve  to  twenty  people  are  present 
to  the  major  festivities  of  a  malaga  (travelling  party) 
or  a  wedding  when  the  largest  guest  house  in  the  village 
is  crowded  within  and  encircled  by  spectators  without. 
With  the  size  and  importance  of  the  festivity,  the 
formality  of  the  arrangements  varies  also.  Usually  the 
occasion  of  even  a  small  siva  (dance)  is  the  presence  of 
at  least  two  or  three  strange  young  people  from  another 
village.  The  pattern  entertainment  is  a  division  of  the 
performers  into  visitors  and  hosts,  the  two  sides  taking 
turns  in  providing  the  music  and  dancing.  This  pattern 
is  still  followed  even  when  the  malaga  numbers  only 
two  individuals,  a  number  of  hosts  going  over  to  swell 
the  visitors'  ranks. 

It  is  at  these  small  informal  dances  that  the  children 
learn  to  dance.  In  the  front  of  the  house  sit  the  young 
people  who  are  the  centre  and  arbiters  of  the  occasion. 

[no] 


THE  ROLE  OF  THE  DANCE 

The  matai  and  his  wife  and  possibly  a  related  matai 
and  the  other  elders  of  the  household  sit  at  the  back  of 
the  house,  in  direct  reversal  of  the  customary  procedure 
according  to  which  the  place  of  the  young  people  is  in 
the  background.  Around  the  ends  cluster  women  and 
children,  and  outside  lurk  the  boys  and  girls  who  are 
not  participating  in  the  dancing,  although  at  any 
moment  they  may  be  drawn  into  it.  On  such  occasions 
the  dancing  is  usually  started  by  the  small  children,  be- 
ginning possibly  with  seven-  and  eight-year-olds.  The 
chief's  wife  or  one  of  the  young  men  will  call  out  the 
names  of  the  children  and  they  are  stood  up  in  a  group 
of  three,  sometimes  all  boys  or  girls,  sometimes  with  a 
girl  between  two  boys,  which  is  the  conventional  adult 
grouping  for  the  taupo  and  her  two  talking  chiefs.  The 
young  men,  sitting  in  a  group  near  the  centre  of  the 
house,  provide  the  music,  one  of  them  standing  and 
leading  the  singing  to  the  accompaniment  of  an  im- 
ported stringed  instrument  which  has  taken  the  place  of 
the  rude  bamboo  drum  of  earlier  times.  The  leader  sets 
the  key  and  the  whole  company  join  in  either  in  the 
song,  or  by  clapping,  or  by  beating  on  the  floor  with 
their  knuckles.  The  dancers  themselves  are  the  final 
arbiters  of  the  excellence  of  the  music  and  it  is  not 
counted  as  petulance  for  a  dancer  to  stop  in  the  middle 
and  demand  better  music  as  the  price  of  continuing. 
The  songs  sung  are  few  in  number  j  the  young  people 
of  one  village  seldom  know  more  than  a  dozen  airs  j  and 
perhaps  twice  ^s  many  sets  of  words  which  are  sung  now 

[ill] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

to  one  air,  now  to  another.  The  verse  pattern  is  simply 
based  upon  the  number  of  syllables  j  a  change  in  stress 
is  permitted  and  rhyme  is  not  demanded  so  that  any 
new  event  is  easily  set  in  the  old  pattern,  and  names 
of  villages  and  of  individuals  are  inserted  with  great 
freedom.  The  content  of  the  songs  is  likely  to  take  on 
an  extremely  personal  character  containing  many  quips 
at  the  expense  of  individuals  and  their  villages. 

The  form  of  the  participation  of  the  audience  changes 
according  to  the  age  of  the  dancers.  In  the  case  of  the 
smaller  children,  it  consists  of  an  endless  stream  of  good- 
natured  comment :  "Faster ! "  "Down  lower !  Lower ! " 
"Do  it  again!"  ^^Fd.stcn  your  lavalava."  In  the  danc- 
ing of  the  more  expert  boys  and  girls  the  group  takes 
part  by  a  steady  murmur  of  "Thank  you,  thank  you, 
for  your  dancing!"  "Beautiful!  Engaging!  Charm- 
ing! Bravo!"  which  gives  very  much  the  effect  of  the 
irregular  stream  of  "Amens"  at  an  evangelistic  revival. 
This  articulate  courtesy  becomes  almost  lyric  in  quality 
when  the  dancer  is  a  person  of  rank  for  whom  dancing 
at  all  is  a  condescension. 

The  little  children  are  put  out  upon  these  public 
floors  with  a  minimum  of  preliminary  instruction.  As 
babies  in  their  mothers'  arms  at  just  such  a  party  as  this, 
they  learned  to  clap  before  they  learned  to  walk,  so  that 
the  beat  is  indelibly  fixed  in  their  minds.  As  two-  and 
three-year-olds  they  have  stood  on  a  mat  at  home  and 
clapped  their  hands  in  time  to  their  elders'  singing. 
Now  they  are  called  upon  to  perform  before  a  group. 

[112] 


THE  ROLE  OF  THE  DANCE 

Wide-eyed,  terrified  babies  stand  beside  some  slightly 
older  child,  clapping  in  desperation  and  trying  to  add 
new  steps  borrowed  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  from 
their  companions.  Every  improvement  is  greeted  with 
loud  applause.  The  child  who  performed  best  at  the 
last  party  is  haled  forward  at  the  next,  for  the  group  is 
primarily  interested  in  its  own  amusement  rather  than 
in  distributing  an  equal  amount  of  practice  among  the 
children.  Hence  some  children  rapidly  outdistance  the 
rest,  through  interest  and  increased  opportunity  as  well 
as  superior  gift.  This  tendency  to  give  the  talented 
child  another  and  another  chance  is  offset  somewhat  by 
tivalry  between  relatives  who  wish  to  thrust  their  little 
ones  forward. 

While  the  children  are  dancing,  the  older  boys  and 
girls  are  refurbishing  their  costumes  with  flowers,  shell 
necklaces,  anklets  and  bracelets  of  leaves.  One  or  two 
will  probably  slip  off  home  and  return  dressed  in 
elaborate  bark  skirts.  A  bottle  of  cocoanut  oil  Is  pro- 
duced from  the  family  chest  and  rubbed  on  the  bodies 
of  the  older  dancers.  Should  a  person  of  rank  be 
present  and  consent  to  dance,  the  hostess  family  bring 
out  their  finest  mats  and  tapas  as  costume.  Sometimes 
this  impromptu  dressing  assumes  such  importance  that 
an  adjoining  house  is  taken  over  as  a  dressing  roomj  at 
others  it  is  of  so  informal  a  nature  that  spectators,  who 
have  gathered  outside  arrayed  only  in  sheets,  have  to 
borrow  a  dress  or  a  lavalava  from  some  other  spectator 
before  they  can  appear  on  the  dance  floor. 

[113] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

The  form  of  the  dance  itself  is  eminently  individu- 
alistic. No  figures  are  prescribed  except  the  half  dozen 
formal  little  claps  which  open  the  dance  and  the  use  of 
one  of  a  few  set  endings.  There  are  twenty-five  or 
thirty  figures,  two  or  three  set  transitional  positions,  and 
at  least  three  definite  styles,  the  dance  of  the  taufOy 
the  dance  of  the  boys,  and  the  dance  of  the  jesters. 
These  three  styles  relate  definitely  to  the  kind  of  dance 
and  not  to  the  status  of  the  dancer.  The  tauf6*s  dance 
is  grave,  aloof,  beautiful.  She  is  required  to  preserve  a 
set,  dreamy,  nonchalant  expression  of  infinite  hauteur 
and  detachment.  The  only  permissible  alternative  to 
this  expression  is  a  series  of  grimaces,  impudent  rather 
than  comic  in  nature  and  deriving  their  principal  appeal 
from  the  strong  contrast  which  they  present  to  the 
more  customary  gravity.  The  manala  also  when  he 
dances  in  his  mana'ia  role  is  required  to  follow  this  same 
decorous  and  dignified  pattern.  Most  little  girls  and  a 
few  little  boys  pattern  their  dancing  on  this  convention. 
Chiefs,  on  the  rare  occasions  when  they  consent  to  dance, 
and  older  women  of  rank  have  the  privilege  of  choosing 
between  this  style  and  the  adoption  of  a  comedian's 
role.  The  boys'  dance  is  much  jollier  than  the  girls'. 
There  is  much  greater  freedom  of  movement  and  a 
great  deal  of  emphasis  on  the  noise  made  by  giving 
rapid  rhythmical  slaps  to  the  unclothed  portions  of  the 
body  which  produce  a  crackling  tattoo  of  sound.  This 
style  is  neither  salacious  nor  languorous  although  the 
taupo^s  dance  is  often  both.     It  is  athletic,  slightly 

[114] 


THE  ROLE  OF  THE  DANCE 

rowdy,  exuberant,  and  owes  much  of  its  appeal  to  the 
feats  of  rapid  and  difficult  co-ordination  which  the  slap- 
ping involves.  The  jester's  dance  is  peculiarly  the 
dance  of  those  who  dance  upon  either  side  of  the  tawpOy 
or  the  manaiay  and  honour  them  by  mocking  them.  It 
is  primarily  the  prerogative  of  talking  chiefs  and  old 
men  and  old  women  in  general.  The  original  motive  is 
contrast  j  the  jester  provides  comic  relief  for  the  stately 
dance  of  the  tawpOy  and  the  higher  the  rank  of  the  tawpOy 
the  higher  the  rank  of  the  men  and  women  who  will 
condescend  to  act  as  clownish  foils  to  her  ability.  The 
dancing  of  these  jesters  is  characterised  by  burlesque, 
horseplay,  exaggeration  of  the  stereotyped  figures,  a 
great  deal  of  noise  made  by  hammering  on  the  open 
mouth  with  spread  palm,  and  a  large  amount  of  leap- 
ing about  and  pounding  on  the  floor.  The  clown  is 
occasionally  so  proficient  that  he  takes  the  centre  of  the 
floor  on  these  ceremonious  occasions. 

The  little  girl  who  is  learning  to  dance  has  these 
three  styles  from  which  to  choose,  she  has  twenty-five 
or  thirty  figures  from  which  to  compose  her  dance  and 
most  important  of  all  she  has  the  individual  dancers  to 
watch.  My  first  interpretation  of  the  skill  of  the 
younger  children  was  that  they  each  took  an  older  boy 
or  girl  as  a  model  and  sedulously  and  slavishly  copied 
the  whole  dance.  But  I  was  not  able  to  find  a  single 
instance  in  which  a  child  would  admit  or  seemed  in 
any  way  conscious  of  having  copied  another  j  nor  did  I 
find,   after    closer    familiarity    with    the    group,    any 

["5] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

younger  child  whose  style  of  dancing  could  definitely 
be  referred  to  the  imitation  of  another  dancer.  The 
style  of  every  dancer  of  any  virtuosity  is  known  to 
every  one  in  the  village  and  when  it  is  copied,  it  is 
copied  conspicuously  so  that  Vaitogi,  the  little  girl  who 
places  her  forearms  parallel  with  the  top  of  her  head, 
her  palms  flat  on  her  head,  and  advances  in  a  stooping 
position,  uttering  hissing  sounds,  will  be  said  to  be  danc- 
ing a  la  Sina.  There  is  no  stigma  upon  such  imitation  j 
the  author  does  not  resent  it  nor  particularly  glory  in 
it  J  the  crowd  does  not  upbraid  it  3  but  so  strong  is  the 
feeling  for  individualisation  that  a  dancer  will  seldom 
introduce  more  than  one  such  feature  into  an  evening's 
performance  J  and  when  the  dancing  of  two  girls  is 
similar,  it  is  similar  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  both,  rather 
than  because  of  any  attempt  at  imitation.  Naturally, 
the  dancing  of  the  young  children  is  much  more  simi- 
lar than  the  dancing  of  the  young  men  and  girls  who 
had  had  time  and  opportunity  really  to  perfect  a  style. 
The  attitude  of  the  elders  towards  precocity  in  sing- 
ing, leading  the  singing  or  dancing,  is  in  striking  con- 
trast to  their  attitude  towards  every  other  form  of 
precocity.  On  the  dance  floor  the  dreaded  accusation, 
"You  are  presuming  above  your  age,"  is  never  heard. 
Little  boys  who  would  be  rebuked  and  possibly  whipped 
for  such  behaviour  on  any  other  occasion  are  allowed 
to  preen  themselves,  to  swagger  and  bluster  and  take 
the  limelight  without  a  word  of  reproach.  The  rela- 
tives crow  with  delight  over  a  precocity  for  which  they 

[116] 


THE  ROLE  OF  THE  DANCE 

would  hide  their  heads  in  shame  were  it  displayed  in 
any  other  sphere. 

It  is  on  these  semi-formal  occasions  that  the  dance 
really  serves  as  an  educational  factor.  The  highly 
ceremonious  dance  of  the  taupo  or  manaia  and  their 
talking  chiefs  at  a  wedding  or  a  malagay  with  its  elab- 
orate costuming,  compulsory  distribution  of  gifts,  and 
its  vigilant  attention  to  precedent  and  prerogative,  offers 
no  opportunities  to  the  amateur  or  the  child.  They  may 
only  cluster  outside  the  guest  house  and  watch  the  pro- 
ceedings. The  existence  of  such  a  heavily  stylized  and 
elaborate  archetype  of  course  serves  an  additional  func- 
tion in  giving  zest  as  well  as  precedent  to  the  informal 
occasions  which  partially  ape  its  grandeur. 

The  significance  of  the  dance  in  the  education  and 
socialisation  of  Samoan  children  is  two-fold.  In  the 
first  place  it  effectively  offsets  the  rigorous  subordi- 
nation in  which  children  are  habitually  kept.  Here  the 
admonitions  of  the  elders  change  from  "Sit  down  and;% 
keep  still!"  to  "Stand  up  and  dance!"  The  children'' 
are  actually  the  centre  of  the  group  instead  of  its  barely 
tolerated  fringes.  The  parents  and  relatives  distribute 
generous  praise  by  way  of  emphasising  their  children's 
superiority  over  the  children  of  their  neighbours  or 
their  visitors.  The  ubiquitous  ascendency  of  age  is 
somewhat  relaxed  in  the  interests  of  greater  proficiency. 
Each  child  is  a  person  with  a  definite  contribution  to 
make  regardless  of  sex  and  age.  This  emphasis  on 
individuality  is  carried  to  limits  which  seriously  mar  the 

["?] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

dance  as  an  aesthetic  performance.  The  formal  adult 
dance  with  its  row  of  dancers,  the  tawpo  in  the  centre 
and  an  even  number  of  dancers  on  each  side  focussed 
upon  her  with  every  movement  directed  towards  ac- 
centuating her  dancing,  loses  both  symmetry  and  unity 
in  the  hands  of  the  ambitious  youngsters.  Each  dancer 
moves  in  a  glorious  individualistic  oblivion  of  the 
others,  there  is  no  pretence  of  co-ordination  or  of  sub- 
ordinating the  wings  to  the  centre  of  the  line.  Often 
a  dancer  does  not  pay  enough  attention  to  her  fellow 
dancers  to  avoid  continually  colliding  with  them.  It 
is  a  genuine  orgy  of  aggressive  individualistic  exhibi- 
tionism. This  tendency,  so  blatantly  displayed  on 
these  informal  occasions,  does  not  mar  the  perfection 
of  the  occasional  formal  dance  when  the  solemnity  of 
the  occasion  becomes  a  sufficient  check  upon  the  partici- 
pants' aggressiveness.  The  formal  dance  is  of  personal 
significance  only  to  people  of  rank  or  to  the  virtuoso  to 
whom  it  presents  a  perfect  occasion  for  display. 

The  second  influence  of  the  dance  is  its  reduction  of 
the  threshold  of  shyness.  There  is  as  much  difference 
between  one  Samoan  child  and  another  in  the  matter  of 
shyness  and  self-consciousness  as  is  apparent  among  our 
children,  but  where  our  shyest  children  avoid  the  lime- 
light altogether,  the  Samoan  child  looks  pained  and 
anxious  but  dances  just  the  same.  The  limelight  is  re- 
garded as  inevitable  and  the  child  makes  at  least  a  mini- 
mum of  effort  to  meet  its  requirements  by  standing  up 
and  going  through  a  certain  number  of  motions.    The 

[ii8] 


THE  ROLE  OF  THE  DANCE 

beneficial  effects  of  this  early  habituation  to  the  public 
eye  and  the  resulting  control  of  the  body  are  more 
noticeable  in  the  case  of  boys  than  of  girls.  Fifteen- 
and  sixteen-year-old  boys  dance  with  a  charm  and  a 
complete  lack  of  self -consciousness  which  is  a  joy  to 
watch.  The  adolescent  girl  whose  gawky,  awkward  gait 
and  lack  of  co-ordination  may  be  appalling,  becomes  a 
graceful,  self-possessed  person  upon  the  dance  floor. 
But  this  ease  and  poise  does  not  seem  to  be  carried  over 
into  everyday  life  with  the  same  facility  as  it  is  in  the 
case  of  young  boys. 

In  one  way  this  informal  dance  floor  approximates 
more  closely  to  our  educational  methods  than  does  any 
lother  aspect  of  Samoan  education.  For  here  the  pre- 
cocious child  is  applauded,  made  much  of,  given  more 
and  more  opportunities  to  show  its  proficiency  while  the 
stupid  child  is  rebuked,  neglected  and  pushed  to  the 
wall.  This  difference  in  permitted  practice  is  reflected 
in  increasing  differences  in  the  skill  of  the  children  as 
'they  grow  older.  Inferiority  feeling  in  the  classic  pic- 
iture  which  is  so  frequent  in  our  society  is  rare  in  Samoa. 
Inferiority  there  seems  to  be  derived  from  two  sources, 
clumsiness  in  sex  relations  which  affects  the  young  men 
after  they  are  grown  and  produces  the  moetotoloy  and 
clumsiness  upon  the  dance  floor.  I  have  already  told 
the  story  of  the  little  girl,  shy  beyond  her  fellows, 
whom  prospective  high  rank  had  forced  into  the  lime- 
light and  made  miserably  diffident  and  self-conscious. 

And  the  most  unhappy  of  the  older  girls  was  Masina, 

[119] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

a  girl  about  three  years  past  puberty.  Masina  could 
not  dance.  Every  one  in  the  village  knew  that  she 
could  not  dance.  Her  contemporaries  deplored  itj  the 
younger  children  made  fun  of  her.  She  had  little 
charm,  was  deprecating  in  her  manner,  awkward,  shy 
and  ill  at  ease.  All  of  her  five  lovers  had  been  casual, 
all  temporary,  all  unimportant.  She  associated  with 
girls  much  younger  than  herself.  She  had  no  self- 
confidence.  No  one  sought  her  hand  in  marriage  and 
she  would  not  marry  until  her  family  needed  the  kind 
of  property  which  forms  a  bride  price. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  one  aspect  of  life 
in  which  the  elders  actively  discriminate  against  the  less 
proficient  children  seems  to  be  the  most  powerful  de- 
terminant in  giving  the  children  a  feeling  of  inferiority. 

The  strong  emphasis  upon  dancing  does  not  dis- 
criminate against  the  physically  defective.  Instead 
every  defect  is  capitalised  in  the  form  of  the  dance  or 
compensated  for  by  the  perfection  of  the  dance.  I  saw 
one  badly  hunchbacked  boy  who  had  worked  out  a  most 
ingenious  imitation  of  a  turtle  and  also  a  combination 
dance  with  another  boy  in  which  the  other  supported 
him  on  his  back.  Ipu,  the  little  albino,  danced  with 
aggressive  facility  and  with  much  applause,  while  mad 
Laki,  who  suffered  from  a  delusion  that  he  was  the 
high  chief  of  the  island,  was  only  too  delighted  to  dance 
for  any  one  who  addressed  him  with  the  elaborate 
courtesy  phrases  suitable  to  his  rank.  The  dumb 
brother  of  the  high  chief  of  one  village  utilised  his 

[120] 


THE  ROLE  OF  THE  DANCE 

deaf  mute  gutturals  as  a  running  accompaniment  to  his 
dance,  while  the  brothers  of  a  fourteen-year-old  feeble- 
minded mad  boy  were  accustomed  to  deck  his  head 
with  branches  which  excited  him  to  a  frenzied  rhyth- 
mical activity,  suggesting  a  stag  whose  antlers  had  been 
caught  in  the  bush.  The  most  precocious  girl  dancer 
in  Tau  was  almost  blind.  So  every  defect,  every 
handicap  was  included  in  this  universal,  specialised  ex- 
ploitation of  personality. 

The  dancing  child  is  almost  always  a  very  different  / 
person  from  her  everyday  self.     After  long  acquaint-  (' 
ance  it  is  sometimes  possible  to  guess  the  type  of  dance  \ 
which  a  particular  girl  will  do.     This  is  particularly  ' 
easy  in  the  case  of  obviously  tom-boy  girls,  but  one  is 
continually  fooled  by  the  depths  of  sophistication  in  the 
dancing  of  some  pensive,  dull  child,  or  the  lazy  grace 
of  some  noisy  little  hoodlum. 

Formal  dancing  displays  are  a  recognised  social  en- 
tertainment and  the  highest  courtesy  a  chief  can  offer 
his  guest  is  to  have  his  taupo  dance  for  him.  So  like- 
wise the  boys  dance  after  they  have  been  tattooed,  the 
manaia  dances  when  he  goes  to  woo  his  bride,  the  bride 
dances  at  her  wedding.  In  the  midnight  conviviality  of 
a  malaga  the  dance  often  becomes  flagrantly  obscene 
and  definitely  provocative  in  character,  but  both  of  these 
are  special  developments  of  less  importance  than  the 
function  of  informal  dancing  in  the  development  of 
individuality  and  the  compensation  for  repression  of 
personality  In  other  spheres  of  life. 

[I2l] 


IX 

THE    ATTITUDE    TOWARDS    PERSONALITY 

THE  ease  with  which  personality  differences  can  be 
adjusted  by  a  change  of  residence  prevents  the  Samoans 
from  pressing  one  another  too  hard.  Their  evaluations 
of  personality  are  g  curious  mixture  of  caution  and 
fatalism.  There  is  one  word  musu  which  expresses  un- 
willingness and  intractability,  wTiether  in  the  mistress 
who  refuses  to  welcome  a  hitherto  welcome  lover,  the 
chief  who  refuses  to  lend  his  kava  bowl,  the  baby  who 
won't  go  to  bed,  or  the  talking  chief  who  won't  go  on 
a  malaga.  The  appearance  of  a  musu  attitude  is  treated 
with  almost  superstitious  respect.  Lovers  will  prescribe 
formulae  for  the  treatment  of  a  mistress,  "lest  she  be- 
come musu"  and  the  behaviour  of  the  suppliant  is  care- 
fully orientated  in  respect  to  this  mysterious  undesira- 
bility.  The  feeling  seems  to  be  not  that  one  is  dealing 
with  an  individual  in  terms  of  his  peculiar  preoccupa- 
tions in  order  to  assure  a  successful  outcome  of  a  per- 
sonal relationship,  appealing  now  to  vanity,  now  to  fear, 
now  to  a  desire  for  power,  but  rather  that  one  is  using 
one  or  another  of  a  series  of  potent  practices  to  prevent 
a  mysterious  and  widespread  psychological  phenome- 
non from  arising.  Once  this  attitude  has  appeared,  a 
Samoan  habitually  gives  up  the  struggle  without  more 

[122] 


i^^j:r.*'i. 


i 


A  sfirii  of  the  zvood 


THE  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  PERSONALITY 

detailed  inquiry  and  with  a  minimum  of  complaint. 
This  fatalistic  acceptance  of  an  inexplicable  attitude 
makes  for  an  odd  incuriousness  about  motives.  The 
Samoans  are  not  in  the  least  insensitive  to  differences 
between  people.  But  their  full  appreciation  of  these 
differences  is  blurred  by  their  conception  of  an  obstinate 
disposition,  a  tendency  to  take  umbrage,  irascibility, 
contra-suggestibility,  and  particular  biases  as  just  so 
many  roads  to  one  attitude — musu. 

This  lack  of  curiosity  about  motivation  is  furthered 
by  the  conventional  acceptance  of  a  completely  ambigu- 
ous answer  to  any  personal  question.  The  most  charac- 
teristic reply  to  any  question  about  one's  motivation  is 
Ta  iloy  "search  me,"  sometimes  made  more  specific  by 
the  addition  of  "I  don't  know."  *  This  is  considered  to 
be  an  adequate  and  acceptable  answer  in  ordinary  con- 
versation although  its  slight  curtness  bars  it  out  from 
ceremonious  occasions.  So  deep  seated  is  the  habit  of 
using  this  disclaimer  that  I  had  to  put  a  taboo  upon  its 
use  by  the  children  in  order  to  get  the  simplest  question 
answered  directly.  When  this  ambiguous  rejoinder  is 
combined  with  a  statement  that  one  is  musu,  the  result 
is  the  final  unrevealing  statement,  "Search  me,  why,  I 
don't  want  to,  that's  all."  Plans  will  be  abandoned, 
children  refuse  to  live  at  home,  marriages  broken  off. 
Village  gossip  is  interested  in  the  fart  but  shrugs  its 
shoulders  before  the  motives^ 

There  is  one  curious  exception  to  this  attitude.     If 

♦See  Appendix  I,  page  253. 

[123] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

an  Individual  falls  ill,  the  explanation  is  sought  first 
in  the  attitudes  of  his  relatives.  Anger  in  the  heart  of  a 
relative,  especially  in  that  of  a  sister^  Is  most  potent  in 
producing  evil  and  so  the  whole  household  is  convened, 
a  kava  ceremony  held  and  each  relative  solemnly  en- 
joined to  confess  what  anger  there  is  in  his  heart  against 
the  sick  person.  Such  injunctions  are  met  either  by 
solemn  disclaimers  or  by  detailed  confessions:  "Last 
week  my  brother  came  into  the  house  and  ate  all  the 
food,  and  I  was  angry  all  day"j  or  "My  brother  and  I 
had  a  quarrel  and  my  father  took  my  brother's  side  and 
I  was  angry  at  my  father  for  his  favouritism  towards 
my  brother."  But  this  special  ceremony  only  serves  to 
throw  into  strong  relief  the  prevalent  unspeculative 
attitude  towards  motivation.  I  once  saw  a  girl  leave  a 
week-end  fishing  party  immediately  upon  arrival  at  our 
destination  and  insist  upon  returning  in  the  heat  of  the 
day  the  six  miles  to  the  village.  But  her  companions 
ventured  no  hypothesis  j  she  was  simply  'musu  to  the 
party. 

How  great  a  protection  for  the  Individual  such  an 
attitude  is  will  readily  be  seen  when  it  is  remembered 
how  little  privacy  any  one  has.  Chief  or  child,  he 
dwells  habitually  in  a  house  with  at  least  half  a  dozen 
other  people.  His  possessions  are  simply  rolled  in  a 
mat,  placed  on  the  rafters  or  piled  carelessly  into  a 
basket  or  a  chest.  A  chief's  personal  property  is  likely 
to  be  respected,  at  least  by  the  women  of  the  house- 
hold, but  no  one  else  can  be  sure  from  hour  to  hour  of 

[124] 


THE  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  PERSONALITY 

his  nominal  possessions.  The  tapa  which  a  woman 
spent  three  weeks  in  making  will  be  given  away  to  a 
visitor  during  her  temporary  absence.  The  rings  may 
be  begged  off  her  fingers  at  any  moment.  Privacy  of 
possessions  is  virtually  impossible.  In  the  same  way, 
all  of  an  individual's  acts  are  public  property.  An 
occasional  love  affair  may  slip  through  the  fingers  of 
gossip,  and  an  occasional  moetotolo  go  uncaught,  but 
there  is  a  very  general  cognisance  on  the  part  of  the 
whole  village  of  the  activity  of  every  single  inhabitant. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  outraged  expression  with  which 
an  informant  told  me  that  nobody,  actually  nobody  at 
all,  knew  who  was  the  father  of  Fa'amoana's  baby. 
The  oppressive  atmosphere  of  the  small  town  is  all 
about  them  J  in  an  hour  children  will  have  made  a 
dancing  song  of  their  most  secret  acts.  This  glaring 
publicity  is  compensated  for  by  a  violent  gloomy  secre- 
tiveness.  Where  a  Westerner  would  say,  "Yes,  I  love 
him  but  you'll  never  know  how  far  it  went,"  a  Samoan 
would  say,  "Yes,  of  course  I  lived  with  him,  but  you'll 
never  know  whether  I  love  him  or  hate  him." 

The  Samoan  language  has  no  regular  comparative. 
There  are  several  clumsy  ways  of  expressing  compari- 
son by  using  contrast,  "This  is  good  and  that  is  bad"j 
or  by  the  locution,  "And  next  to  him  there  comes,  etc." 
Comparisons  are  not  habitual  although  in  the  rigid 
social  structure  of  the  community,  relative  rank  is  very 
keenly  recognised.  But  relative  goodness,  relative 
beauty,  relative  wisdom  are  unfamiliar  formalisations 

[125] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

to  them.  I  tried  over  and  over  again  to  get  judgments 
as  to  who  was  the  wisest  or  the  best  man  of  the  com- 
munity. An  informant's  first  impulse  was  always  to 
answer:  "Oh,  they  are  all  good"j  or,  "There  are  so 
many  wise  ones."  Curiously  enough,  there  seemed  to 
be  less  difficulty  in  distinguishing  the  vicious  than  the 
virtuous.  This  is  probably  due  to  the  Missionary  in- 
fluence which  if  it  has  failed  to  give  the  native  a  con- 
viction of  Sin,  has  at  least  provided  him  with  a  list  of 
sins.  Although  I  often  met  with  a  preliminary  re- 
sponse, "There  are  so  many  bad  boys"j  it  was  usually 
qualified  spontaneously  by  "But  so-and-so  is  the  worst 
because  he  .  .  ."  Ugliness  and  viciousness  were  more 
vivid  and  unusual  attributes  of  personality;  beauty,  wis- 
dom, and  kindness  were  taken  for  granted. 

In  an  account  given  of  another  person  the  sequence 
of  traits  mentioned  followed  a  set  and  objective  pattern: 
sex,  age,  rank,  relationship,  defects,  activities.  Sponta- 
neous comment  upon  character  or  personality  were  un- 
usual. So  a  girl  describes  her  grandmother:  "Lauuli? 
Oh,  she  is  an  old  woman,  very  old,  she's  my  father's 
mother.  She's  a  widow  with  one  eye.  She  is  too  old 
to  go  inland  but  sits  in  the  house  all  day.  She  makes 
tapa."  *  This  completely  unanalytical  account  is  only 
modified  in  the  case  of  exceptionally  in^.elligent  adults- 
who  are  asked  to  make  judgments. 

In  the  native  classification  attitudes  are  qualified  by 
four  terms,  good  and  bad,  easy  and  difficult,  paired.    A 

*  For  additional  character  sketches  see  Appendix  I,  page  253. 

[126] 


THE  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  PERSONALITY 

good  child  will  be  said  to  listen  easily  or  to  act  well,  a 
bad  child  to  listen  with  difficulty  or  act  badly.  "Easy" 
and  "with  difficulty"  are  judgments  of  character j 
"good"  and  "bad"  of  behaviour.  So  that  good  or  bad 
behaviour  have  become,  explained  in  terms  of  ease  or 
difficulty,  to  be  regarded  as  an  inherent  capability  of  the 
individual.  As  we  would  say  a  person  sang  easily  or 
swam  without  effort,  the  Samoan  will  say  one  obeys 
easily,  acts  respectfully,  "easily,"  reserving  the  terms 
"good"  or  "well"  for  objective  approbation.  So  a 
chief  who  was  commenting  on  the  bad  behaviour  of 
his  brother's  daughter  remarked,  "But  Tui's  children 
always  did  listen  with  difficulty,"  with  as  casual  an 
acceptance  of  an  irradicable  defect  as  if  he  had  said, 
"But  John  always  did  have  poor  eye  sight." 

Such  an  attitude  towards  conduct  is  paralleled  by  an 
equally  unusual  attitude  towards  the  expression  of  emo- 
tion. The  expressions  of  emotions  are  classified  as 
"caused"  and  "uncaused."  The  emotional,  easily  up- 
set, m.oody  person  is  described  as  laughing  without 
cause,  crying  without  cause,  showing  anger  or  pugna- 
ciousness  without  cause.  The  expression  "to  be  very 
angry  without  cause"  does  not  carry  the  implication  of 
quick  temper,  which  is  expressed  by  the  word  "to  anger 
easily,"  nor  the  connotation  of  a  disproportionate  re- 
sponse to  a  legitimate  stimulus,  but  means  literally  to 
be  angry  without  cause,  or  freely,  an  emotional  state 
without  any  apparent  stimulus  whatsoever.  Such  judg- 
ments are  the  nearest  that  the  Samoan  approaches  to 
,...  [127] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

evaluation  of  temperament  as  opposed  to  character. 
The  well-integrated  individual  who  approximates 
closely  to  the  attitudes  of  his  age  and  sex  group  is  not 
accused  of  laughing,  crying,  or  showing  anger  without 
cause.  Without  inquiry  it  is  assumed  that  he  has  good 
typical  reasons  for  a  behaviour  which  would  be  scruti- 
nised and  scorned  in  the  case  of  the  temperamental 
deviant.  And  always  excessive  emotion,  violent  pref- 
erences, strong  allegiances  are  disallowed.  The  Samoan 
preference  is  for  a  middle  course,  a  moderate  amount  o± 
feeling,  a  discreet  expression  of  a  reasonable  and  bal- 
anced attitude.  Those  who  care  greatly  are  always 
said  to  care  without  cause. 

The  one  most  disliked  trait  in  a  contemporary  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  term  fiasili,  literally  "desiring  to  be 
highest,"  more  idiomatically,  "stuck  up."  This  is  the 
comment  of  the  age  mate  where  an  older  person  would 
use  the  disapproving  tautala  laititiy  "presuming  above 
one's  age."  It  is  essentially  the  resentful  comment  of 
those  who  are  ignored,  neglected,  left  behind  upon  those 
who  excel  them,  scorn  them,  pass  them  by.  As  a  term 
of  reproach  it  is  neither  as  dreaded  nor  as  resented  as 
the  tautala  laititl  because  envy  is  felt  to  play  a  part 
in  the  taunt. 

In  the  casual  conversations,  the  place  of  idle  specula- 
tion about  motivation  is  taken  by  explanations  in  terms 
of  physical  defect  or  objective  misfortune,  thus  "Sila 
is  crying  over  in  that  house.  Well,  Sila  is  deaf." 
"Tulipa  is  angry  at  her  brother.    Tulipa's  mother  went 

[128] 


THE  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  PERSONALITY 

to  Tutuila  last  week."  Although  these  statements  have 
the  earmarks  of  attempted  explanations  they  are  really 
onl^_conversational  habits._._The  physical  defect  or 
recent  incident,  is  not  specifically  invoked  but  merely 
mentioned  with  slightly  greater  and  more  deprecatory 
emphasis.  The  whole  preoccupation  is  with  the  in- 
dividual as  an  actor,  and  the  motivations  peculiar  to  his 
psychology  are  left  an  unplumbed  mystery. 

Judgments  are  always  made  in  terms  of  age  groups, 
from  the  standpoints  of  the  group  of  the  speaker  and 
the  age  of  the  person  judged.  A  young  boy  will  not 
be  regarded  as  an  intelligent  or  stupid,  attractive  or  un- 
attractive, clumsy  or  skilful  person.  He  is  a  bright 
little  boy  of  nine  who  runs  errands  efficiently  and  is 
wise  enough  to  hold  his  tongue  when  his  elders  are 
present,  or  a  promising  youth  of  eighteen  who  can 
make  excellent  speeches  in  the  Aumagay  lead  a  fishing 
expedition  with  discretion  and  treat  the  chiefs  with  the 
respect  which  is  due  to  them,  or  a  wise  matai,  whose 
words  are  few  and  well  chosen  and  who  is  good  at  weav- 
ing eel  traps.  The  virtues  of  the  child  are  not  the 
virtues  of  the  adult.  And  the  judgment  of  the  speaker 
is  similarly  influenced  by  age,  so  that  the  relative  esti- 
mation of  character  varies  also.  Pre-adolescent  boys 
and  girls  will  vote  that  boy  and  girl  worst  who  are  most 
pugnacious,  irascible,  contentious,  rowdy.  Young  peo- 
ple from  sixteen  to  twenty  shift  their  censure  from 
the  rowdy  and  bully  to  the  licentious,  the  moetotolo 
among  the  boys,  the  notoriously  promiscuous  among  the 

[129] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

girls  j  while  adults  pay  very  little  attention  to  sex  of- 
fenders and  stress  instead  the  inept,  the  impudent  and 
the  disobedient  among  the  young,  and  the  lazy,  the 
stupid,  the  quarrelsome  and  the  unreliable  as  the  least 
desirable  characters  among  the  adults.  When  an  adult 
is  speaking  the  standards  of  conduct  are  graded  in  this 
fashion:  small  children  should  keep  quiet,  wake  up 
early,  obey,  work  hard  and  cheerfully,  play  with  chil- 
dren of  their  own  sexj  young  people  should  work  in- 
dustriously and  skilfully,  not  be  presuming,  marry  dis- 
creetly, be  loyal  to  their  relatives,  not  carry  tales,  nor 
be  trouble  makers  j  while  adults  should  be  wise,  peace- 
able, serene,  generous,  anxious  for  the  good  prestige  of 
their  village  and  conduct  their  lives  with  all  good  form 
and  decorum.  No  prominence  is  given  to  the  subtler 
facts  of  intelligence  and  temperament.  Preference  be- 
tween the  sexes  is  given  not  to  the  arrogant,  the  flippant, 
the  courageous,  but  to  the  quiet,  the  demure  boy  or  girl 
who  "speaks  softly  and  treads  lightly." 


[130] 


X 


THE  EXPERIENCE  AND  INDIVIDUALITY  OF  THE  AVERAGE 

GIRL  * 

WITH  a  background  of  knowledge  about  Samoan  cus- 
tom, of  the  way  in  which  a  ch'ld  is  educated,  of  the 
claims  which  the  community  makes  upon  children  and 
young  people,  of  the  attitude  towards  sex  and  per- 
sonality, we  come  to  the  tale  of  the  group  of  girls  with 
whom  I  spent  many  months,  the  group  of  girls  between 
ten  and  twenty  years  of  age  who  lived  in  the  three  little 
villages  on  the  lee  side  of  the  island  of  Tau.  In  their 
lives  as  a  group,  in  their  responses  as  individuals,  lies 
the  answer  to  the  question:  What  is  coming  of  age  like 
in  Samoa? 

The  reader  will  remember  that  the  principal  activity 
of  the  little  girls  was  baby-tending.  They  could  also 
do  reef  fishing,  weave  a  ball  and  make  a  pin-wheel, 
climb  a  cocoanut  tree,  keep  themselves  afloat  in  a  swim- 
ming hole  which  changed  its  level  fifteen  feet  with 
every  wave,  grate  off  the  skin  of  a  breadfruit  or  taro, 
sweep  the  sanded  yard  of  the  house,  carry  water  from 
the  sea,  do  simple  washing  and  dance  a  somewhat  indi- 
vidualised siva.     Their  knowledge  of  the  biology  of 

*  See  Tables  and  Summaries  in  Appendix  IV. 

[131] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

life  and  death  was  overdeveloped  in  proportion  to 
their  knowledge  of  the  organisation  of  their  society  or 
any  of  the  niceties  of  conduct  prescribed  for  their  elders. 
They  were  in  a  position  which  would  be  paralleled  in 
our  culture  if  a  child  had  seen  birth  and  death  before 
she  was  taught  not  to  pass  a  knife  blade  first  or  how  to 
make  change  for  a  quarter.  None  of  these  children 
could  speak  the  courtesy  language,  even  in  its  most  ele- 
mentary forms,  their  knowledge  being  confined  to  four 
or  five  words  of  invitation  and  acceptance.  This 
ignorance  effectually  barred  them  from  the  conversa- 
tions of  their  elders  upon  all  ceremonial  occasions. 
Spying  upon  a  gathering  of  chiefs  would  have  been  an 
unrewarding  experience.  They  knew  nothing  of  the 
social  organisation  of  the  village  beyond  knowing  which 
adults  were  heads  of  families  and  which  adult  men  and 
women  were  married.  They  used  the  relationship 
terms  loosely  and  without  any  real  understanding,  often 
substituting  the  term,  "sibling  of  my  own  sex,"  where 
a  sibling  of  opposite  sex  was  meant,  and  when  they 
applied  the  term  "brother"  to  a  young  uncle,  they  did 
so  without  the  clarity  of  their  elders  who,  while  using 
the  term  in  an  age-grouping  sense,  realised  perfectly 
that  the  "brother"  was  really  a  mother's  or  father's 
brother.  In  their  use  of  language  their  immaturity  was 
chiefly  evidenced  by  a  lack  of  familiarity  with  the 
courtesy  language,  and  by  much  confusion  in  the  use  of 
the  dual  and  of  the  inclusive  and  exclusive  pronouns. 
These  present  about  the  same  difficulty  in  their  lan- 

[132] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

guage  as  the  use  of  a  nominative  after  the  verb  "to  be" 
in  English.  They  had  also  not  acquired  a  mastery  of 
the  processes  for  manipulating  the  vocabulary  by  the 
use  of  very  freely  combining  prefixes  and  suffixes.  A 
child  will  use  the  term  fa'a  Samoay  "in  Samoan  fash- 
ion," or  fa'atamay  tomboy,  but  fail  to  use  the  con- 
venient fa'a  in  making  a  new  and  less  stereotyped  com- 
parison, using  instead  some  less  convenient  linguistic 
circumlocution.* 

All  of  these  children  had  seen  birth  and  death.  They 
had  seen  many  dead  bodies.  They  had  watched  miscar- 
riage and  peeked  under  the  arms  of  the  old  women  who 
were  washing  and  commenting  upon  the  undeveloped 
foetus.  There  was  no  convention  of  sending  children 
of  the  family  away  at  such  times,  although  the  hordes 
of  neighbouring  children  were  scattered  with  a  shower 
of  stones  if  any  of  the  older  women  could  take  time 
from  the  more  absorbing  events  to  hurl  them.  But  the 
feeling  here  was  that  children  were  noisy  and  trouble- 
some j  there  was  no  desire  to  protect  them  from  shock 
or  to  keep  them  in  ignorance.  About  half  of  the  chil- 
dren had  seen  a  partly  developed  foetus,  which  the 
Samoans  fear  will  otherwise  be  born  as  an  avenging 
ghost,  cut  from  a  woman's  dead  body  in  the  open 
grave.  If  shock  is  the  result  of  early  experiences  with 
birth,  death,  or  sex  activities,  it  should  surely  be  mani- 
fest here  in  this  postmortem  Csesarian  where  grief  for 
the  dead,  fear  of  death,  a  sense  of  horror  and  a  dread  of 

*See  Appendix  I,  page  256. 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

contamination  from  contact  with  the  dead,  the  open, 
unconcealed  operation  and  the  sight  of  the  distorted, 
repulsive  foetus  all  combine  to  render  the  experience 
indelible.  An  only  slightly  less  emotionally  charged 
experience  was  the  often  witnessed  operation  of  cut- 
ting open  any  dead  body  to  search  out  the  cause  of 
death.  These  operations  performed  in  the  shallow 
open  grave,  beneath  a  glaring  noon-day  sun,  with  a 
frighted,  excited  crowd  watching  in  horrified  fascina- 
tion, are  hardly  orderly  or  unemotional  initiations  into 
the  details  of  biology  and  death,  and  yet  they  seem  to 
leave  no  bad  effects  on  the  children's  emotional  make- 
up. Possibly  the  adult  attitude  that  these  are  horrible 
but  perfectly  natural,  non-unique  occurrences,  forming 
a  legitimate  part  of  the  child's  experience,  may  suffi- 
ciently account  for  the  lack  of  bad  results.  Children 
take  an  intense  interest  in  life  and  death,  and  are  more 
proportionately  obsessed  by  it  than  are  their  adults  who 
divide  their  horror  between  the  death  of  a  young  neigh- 
bour in  child-bed  and  the  fact  that  the  high  chief  has 
been  insulted  by  some  breach  of  etiquette  in  the  neigh- 
bouring village.  The  intricacies  of  the  social  life  are  a 
closed  book  to  the  child  and  a  correspondingly  fascinat- 
ing field  of  exploration  in  later  life,  while  the  facts  of 
life  and  death  are  shorn  of  all  mystery  at  an  early  age. 
In  matters  of  sex  the  ten-year-olds  are  equally 
sophisticated,  although  they  witness  sex  activities  only 
surreptitiously,  since  all  expressions  of  affection  are 
rigorously  barred  in  public.    A  couple  whose  wedding 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

night  may  have  been  spent  in  a  room  with  ten  other 
people  will  never  the  less  shrink  in  shame  from  even 
touching  hands  in  public.  Individuals  between  whom 
there  have  been  sex  relations  are  said  to  be  "shy  of 
each  other,"  and  manifest  this  shyness  in  different 
fashion  but  with  almost  the  same  intensity  as  in  the 
brother  and  sister  avoidance.  Husbands  and  wives 
never  walk  side  by  side  through  the  village,  for  the 
husband,  particularly,  would  be  "ashamed."  So  no 
Samoan  child  is  accustomed  to  seeing  father  and  mother 
exchange  casual  caresses.  The  customary  salutation  by 
rubbing  noses  is,  of  course,  as  highly  conventionalised 
and  impersonal  as  our  handshake.  The  only  sort  of 
demonstration  which  ever  occurs  in  public  is  of  the 
horseplay  variety  between  young  people  whose  affec- 
tions are  not  really  involved.  This  romping  is  par- 
ticularly prevalent  in  groups  of  women,  often  taking 
the  form  of  playfully  snatching  at  the  sex  organs. 

But  the  lack  of  privacy  within  the  houses  where 
mosquito  netting  marks  off  purely  formal  walls  about 
the  married  couples,  and  the  custom  of  young  lovers 
of  using  the  palm  groves  for  their  rendezvous,  makes 
it  inevitable  that  children  should  see  intercourse,  often 
and  between  many  different  people.  In  many  cases 
they  have  not  seen  first  intercourse,  which  is  usually 
accompanied  by  greater  shyness  and  precaution.  With 
the  passing  of  the  public  ceremony,  defloration  forms 
one  of  the  few  mysteries  in  a  young  Samoan's  knowl- 
edge of  life.    But  scouring  the  village  palm  groves  in 

[135] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

search  of  lovers  is  one  of  the  recognised  forms  of 
amusement  for  the  ten-year-olds. 

Samoan  children  have  complete  knowledge  of  the 
human  body  and  its  functions,  owing  to  the  custom  of 
little  children  going  unclothed,  the  scant  clothing  of 
adults,  the  habit  of  bathing  in  the  sea,  the  use  of  the 
beach  as  a  latrine  and  the  lack  of  privacy  in  sexual  life. 
They  also  have  a  vivid  understanding  of  the  nature  of 
sex.  Masturbation  is  an  all  but  universal  habit,  be- 
ginning at  the  age  of  six  or  seven.  There  were  only 
three  little  girls  in  my  group  who  did  not  masturbate. 
Theoretically  it  is  discontinued  with  the  beginning  of 
heterosexual  activity  and  only  resumed  again  in  periods 
of  enforced  continence.  Among  grown  boys  and  girls 
[casual  homosexual  practices  also  supplant  it  to  a  certain 
lextent.  Boys  masturbati&Jii^groups  but  among  little 
girls  it  is  a  more  individualistic,  secretive  practice.  This 
habit  seems  never  to  be  a  matter  of  individual  discovery, 
one  child  always  learning  from  another.  The  adult  ban 
only  covers  the  unseemliness  of  open  indulgence. 

The  adult  attitude  towards  all  the  details  of  sex  is 
characterised  by  this  view  that  they  are  unseemly,  not 
that  they  are  wrong.  Thus  a  youth  would  think  noth- 
ing of  shouting  the  length  of  the  village,  "Ho,  maiden, 
wait  for  me  in  your  bed  to-night,"  but  public  comment 
upon  the  details  of  sex  or  of  evacuation  were  considered 
to  be  in  bad  taste.  All  the  words  which  are  thus  ban- 
ished from  polite  conversation  are  cherished  by  the 
children  who  roll  the  salacious  morsels  under  their 

[136] 


I  I 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

tongues  with  great  relish.  The  children  of  seven  and 
eight  get  as  much  illicit  satisfaction  out  of  the  other 
functions  of  the  body  as  out  of  sex.  This  is  interesting 
in  view  of  the  different  attitude  in  Samoa  towards  the 
normal  processes  of  evacuation.  There  is  no  privacy 
and  no  sense  of  shame.  Nevertheless  the  brand  of  bad 
taste  seems  to  be  as  effective  in  interesting  the  young 
children  as  is  the  brand  of  indecency  among  us.  It  is 
also  curious  that  in  theory  and  in  fact  boys  and  men  take 
a  more  active  interest  in  the  salacious  than  do  the 
women  and  girls. 

It  seems  difficult  to  account  for  a  salacious  attitude 
among  a  people  where  so  little  is  mysterious,  so  little 
forbidden.  The  precepts  of  the  missionaries  may  have 
modified  the  native  attitude  more  than  the  native  prac- 
tice. And  the  adult  attitude  towards  children  as  non- 
participants  may  also  be  an  important  causal  factor. 
For  this  seems  to  be  the  more  correct  view  of  any  pro- 
hibitions which  govern  children.  There  is  little  evi- 
dence of  a  desire  to  preserve  a  child's  innocence  or  to 
protect  it  from  witnessing  behaviour,  the  following  of 
which  would  constitute  the  heinous  offence,  tautala 
laltut  ("presuming  above  one's  age").  For  while  a  pair 
of  lovers  would  never  indulge  in  any  demonstration 
before  any  one,  child  or  adult,  who  was  merely  a  specta- 
tor, three  or  four  pairs  of  lovers  who  are  relatives  or 
friends  often  choose  a  common  rendezvous.  (This,  of 
course,  excludes  relatives  of  opposite  sex,  included  in 
the  brother  and  sister   avoidance,  although   married 

[137] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

brothers  and  sisters  might  live  in  the  same  house  after 
marriage.)  From  the  night  dances,  now  discontinued 
under  missionary  influence,  which  usually  ended  in  a 
riot  of  open  promiscuity,  children  and  old  people  were 
excluded,  as  non-participants  whose  presence  as  unin- 
volved  spectators  would  have  been  indecent.  This 
attitude  towards  non-participants  characterised  all  emo- 
tionally charged  events,  a  women's  weaving  bee  which 
was  of  a  formal,  ceremonial  nature,  a  house-building, 
a  candle-nut  burning — these  were  activities  at  which  the 
presence  of  a  spectator  would  have  been  unseemly. 

Yet,  coupled  with  the  sophistication  of  the  children 
went  no  pre-adolescent  heterosexual  experimentation 
and  very  little  homosexual  activity  which  was  regarded 
in  native  theory  as  imitative  of  and  substitutive  for 
heterosexual.  The  lack  of  precocious  sex  experimenta- 
tion is  probably  due  less  to  the  parental  ban  on  such 
precocity  than  to  the  strong  institutionalised  antagonism 
between  younger  boys  and  younger  girls  and  the  taboo 
against  any  amiable  intercourse  between  them.  This 
rigid  sex  dichotomy  may  also  be  operative  in  determin- 
ing the  lack  of  specialisation  of  sex  feeling  in  adults. 
Since  there  is  a  heavily  charged  avoidance  feeling  to- 
wards brother  and  cousins,  and  a  tendency  to  lump  all 
other  males  together  as  the  enemy  who  will  some  day 
be  one's  lovers,  there  are  no  males  in  a  girPs  age  group 
whom  she  ever  regards  simply  as  individuals  without 
relation  to  sex. 

Such  then  was  the  experience  of  the  twenty-eight 

[138] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

little  girls  in  the  three  villages.  In  temperament  and 
character  they  varied  enormously.  There  was  Tita, 
who  at  nine  acted  like  a  child  of  seven,  was  still  prin- 
cipally preoccupied  with  food,  completely  irresponsible 
as  to  messages  and  commissions,  satisfied  to  point  a 
proud  fat  finger  at  her  father  who  was  town  crier. 
Only  a  year  her  senior  was  Pele,  the  precocious  little 
sister  of  the  loosest  woman  in  the  village.  Pele  spent 
most  of  her  time  caring  for  her  sister's  baby  which,  she 
delighted  in  telling  you,  was  of  disputed  parentage. 
Her  dancing  in  imitation  of  her  sister's  was  daring  and 
obscene.  Yet,  despite  the  burden  of  the  heavy  ailing 
baby  which  she  carried  always  on  her  hip  and  the  sor- 
didness  of  her  home  where  her  fifty-year-old  mother 
still  took  occasional  lovers  and  her  weak-kneed  insignifi- 
cant father  lived  a  hen-pecked  ignominious  existence, 
Pele's  attitude  towards  life  was  essentially  gay  and 
sane.  Better  than  suggestive  dancing  she  liked  hunt- 
ing for  rare  samoana  shells  along  the  beach  or  diving 
feet  first  into  the  swimming  hole  or  hunting  for  land 
crabs  in  the  moonlight.  Fortunately  for  her,  she  lived 
in  the  centre  of  the  Luma  gang.  In  a  more  isolated 
spot  her  unwholesome  home  and  natural  precocity 
might  have  developed  very  differently.  As  it  was, 
she  differed  far  less  from  the  other  children  in  her 
group  than  her  family,  the  most  notorious  in  the  village, 
differed  from  the  families  of  her  companions.  In  a 
Samoan  village  the  influence  of  the  home  environment 
is  being  continually  offset  in  the  next  generation  by 

[139] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

group  activities  through  which  the  normal  group 
standards  assert  themselves.  This  was  universally  true 
for  the  boys  for  whom  the  many  years'  apprenticeship 
in  the  Aumaga  formed  an  excellent  school  for  dis- 
ciplining individual  peculiarities.  In  the  case  of  the 
girls  this  function  was  formerly  performed  in  part  by 
the  Aualumay  but,  as  I  pointed  out  in  the  chapter  on 
the  girl  and  her  age  group,  the  little  girl  is  much  more 
dependent  upon  her  neighbourhood  than  is  the  boy. 
As  an  adult  she  is  also  more  dependent  upon  her  rela- 
tionship group. 

Tuna,  who  lived  next  door  to  Pele,  was  in  a  different 
plight,  the  unwilling  little  victim  of  the  great  Samoan 
sin  of  tautala  laUit't.  Her  sister  Lila  had  eloped  at 
fifteen  with  a  seventeen-year-old  boy.  A  pair  of  hot- 
headed children,  they  had  never  thoroughly  re-estab- 
lished themselves  with  the  community,  although  their 
families  had  relented  and  solemnised  the  marriage  with 
an  appropriate  exchange  of  property.  Lila  still  smarted 
under  the  public  disapproval  of  her  precocity  and 
lavished  a  disproportionate  amount  of  affection  upon 
her  obstreperous  baby  whose  incessant  crying  was  the 
bane  of  the  neighbourhood.  After  spoiling  him  be- 
yond endurance,  she  would  hand  him  over  to  Tuna. 
Tuna,  a  stocky  little  creature  with  a  large  head  and 
enormous  melting  eyes,  looked  at  life  from  a  slightly 
oblique  angle.  She  was  a  little  more  calculating  than 
the  other  children,  a  little  more  watchful  for  returns, 
less  given  to  gratuitous  outlays  of  personal  service. 

[140] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

Her  sister's  overindulgence  of  the  baby  made  Tuna's 
task  much  harder  than  those  of  her  companions.  But 
she  reaped  her  reward  in  the  slightly  extra  gentleness 
with  which  they  treated  their  most  burdened  associate, 
and  here  again  the  group  saved  her  from  a  pronounced 
temperamental  response  to  the  exigencies  of  her  home 
life. 

A  little  further  away  lived  Fitu  and  Ula,  Maliu  and 
Pola,  two  pairs  of  sisters.  Fitu  and  Maliu,  girls  of 
about  thirteen,  were  just  withdrawing  from  the  gang, 
turning  their  younger  brothers  and  sisters  over  to  Ula 
and  Pola,  and  beginning  to  take  a  more  active  part  in 
the  affairs  of  their  households,  Ula  was  alert,  pretty, 
pampered.  Her  household  might  in  all  fairness  be 
compared  to  oursj  it  consisted  of  her  mother,  her  father, 
two  sisters  and  two  brothers.  True,  her  uncle  who  lived 
next  door  was  the  inatai  of  the  household,  but  still  this 
little  biological  family  had  a  strong  separate  existence 
of  its  own  and  the  children  showed  the  results  of  it. 
Lalala,  the  mother,  was  an  intelligent  and  still  beauti- 
ful woman,  even  after  bearing  six  children  in  close 
succession.  She  came  from  a  family  of  high  rank,  and 
because  she  had  had  no  brothers,  her  father  had  taught 
her  much  of  the  genealogical  material  usually  taught 
to  the  favourite  son.  Her  knowledge  of  the  social 
structure  of  the  community  and  of  the  minutlas  of  the 
ceremonies  which  had  formerly  surrounded  the  court 
of  the  king  of  Manu'a  was  as  full  as  that  of  any  middle- 
aged  man  in  the  community.     She  was  skilled  in  the 

[141] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

handicrafts  and  her  brain  was  full  of  new  designs  and 
unusual  applications  of  material.  She  knew  several 
potent  medical  remedies  and  had  many  patients.  Mar- 
ried at  fifteen,  while  still  a  virgin,  her  marital  life, 
which  had  begun  with  the  cruel  public  defloration  cere- 
mony, had  been  her  only  sex  experience.  She  adored 
her  husband,  whose  poverty  was  due  to  his  having  come 
from  another  island  and  not  to  laziness  or  inability. 
Lalala  made  her  choices  in  life  with  a  full  recognition 
of  the  facts  of  her  existence.  There  was  too  much  for 
her  to  do.  She  had  no  younger  sisters  to  bear  the  brunt 
of  baby-tending  for  her.  There  were  no  youths  to  help 
her  husband  in  the  plantations.  Well  and  good,  she 
would  not  wrestle  with  the  inevitable.  And  so  Lalala's 
house  was  badly  kept.  Her  children  were  dirty  and 
bedraggled.  But  her  easy  good  nature  did  not  fail  her 
as  she  tried  to  weave  a  fine  mat  on  some  blazing  after- 
noon, while  the  baby  played  with  the  brittle  easily 
broken  pandanus  strands,  and  doubled  her  work.  But 
all  of  this  reacted  upon  Fitu,  lanky,  ill-favoured  execu- 
tive little  creature  that  she  was.  Fitu  combined  a 
passionate  devotion  to  her  mother  with  an  obsessive 
solicitude  for  her  younger  brothers  and  sisters.  To- 
wards Ula  alone  her  attitude  was  mixed.  Ula,  fifteen 
months  younger,  was  pretty,  lithe,  flexible  and  indolent. 
While  Fitu  was  often  teased  by  her  mother  and  re- 
buked by  her  companions  for  being  like  a  boy,  Ula  was 
excessively  feminine.    She  worked  as  hard  as  any  other 

[142] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

child  of  her  age,  but  Fitu  felt  that  their  mother  and 
their  home  were  unusual  and  demanded  more  than  the 
average  service  and  devotion.  She  and  her  mother 
were  like  a  pair  of  comrades,  and  Fitu  bossed  and  joked 
with  her  mother  in  a  fashion  shocking  to  all  Samoan 
onlookers.  If  Fitu  was  away  at  night,  her  mother  went 
herself  to  look  for  her,  instead  of  sending  another  child. 
Fitu  was  the  eldest  daughter,  with  a  precocity  bred  of 
responsibility  and  an  efficiency  which  was  the  direct  out- 
come of  her  mother's  laissez-faire  attitude.  Ula 
showed  equally  clearly  the  effect  of  being  the  prettier 
younger  sister,  trading  upon  her  superior  attractiveness 
and  more  meagre  sense  of  duty.  These  children,  as 
did  the  children  in  all  three  of  the  biological  families 
in  the  three  villages,  showed  more  character,  more 
sharply  defined  personality,  greater  precocity  and  a 
more  personal,  more  highly  charged  attitude  toward*; 
their  parents. 

It  would  be  easy  to  lay  too  much  stress  on  the  dif- 
ferences between  children  in  large  households  and  chil- 
dren in  small  ones.  There  were,  of  course,  too  few 
cases  to  draw  any  final  conclusions.  But  the  small  fam- 
ily in  Samoa  did  demand  from  the  child  the  very  quali- 
ties which  were  frowned  upon  in  Samoan  society,  based 
upon  the  ideal  of  great  households  in  which  there  were 
many  youthful  labourers  who  knew  their  place.  And 
in  these  small  families  where  responsibility  and  initia- 
tive were  necessary,  the  children  seemed  to  develop 

[143] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

them  much  earlier  than  in  the  more  usual  home  envi- 
ronment in  which  any  display  of  such  qualities  was 
sternly  frowned  upon. 

This  was  the  case  with  Malui  and  Meta,  Ipu  and  Vi, 
Mata,  Tino  and  Lama,  little  girls  just  approaching 
puberty  who  lived  in  large  heterogeneous  households. 
They  were  giving  over  baby-tending  for  more  produc- 
tive work.  They  were  reluctantly  acquiring  some  of 
the  rudiments  of  etiquette  j  they  were  slowly  breaking 
their  play  affiliations  with  the  younger  children.  But 
all  of  this  was  an  enforced  change  of  habits  rather  than 
any  change  in  attitude.  They  were  conscious  of  their 
new  position  as  almost  grown  girls  who  could  be  trusted 
to  go  fishing  or  work  on  the  plantations.  Under  their 
short  dresses  they  again  wore  lavalavas  which  they  had 
almost  forgotten  how  to  keep  fastened.  These  dragged 
about  their  legs  and  cramped  their  movements  and  fell 
oif  if  they  broke  into  a  sprint.  Most  of  all  they  missed 
the  gang  life  and  eyed  a  little  wistfully  the  activities  of 
their  younger  relatives.  Their  large  impersonal  house- 
holds provided  them  with  no  personal  drives,  invested 
them  with  no  intriguing  responsibilities.  They  were 
simply  little  girls  who  were  robust  enough  to  do  heavy 
work  and  old  enough  to  learn  to  do  skilled  work,  and 
so  had  less  time  for  play. 

In  general  attitude,  they  differed  not  at  all  from 
Tolo,  from  Tulipa,  from  Lua,  or  Lata,  whose  first 
menstruation  was  a  few  months  past.  No  ceremony 
had  marked  the  difference  between  the  two  groups.    No 

[144] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

social  attitude  testified  to  a  crisis  past.  They  were  told 
not  to  make  kava  while  menstruating,  but  the  participa- 
tion in  a  restriction  they'd  known  about  all  their  lives 
was  unimpressive.  Some  of  them  had  made  kava  be- 
fore puberty,  others  had  not.  It  depended  entirely 
upon  whether  there  was  an  available  girl  or  boy  about 
when  a  chief  wished  to  have  some  kava  made.  In  more 
rigorous  days  a  girl  could  not  make  kava  nor  marry 
until  she  menstruated.  But  the  former  restriction  had 
yielded  to  the  requirements  of  expediency.  The 
menstruating  girl  experienced  very  little  pain  which 
might  have  served  to  stress  for  her  her  new  maturity. 
All  of  the  girls  reported  back  or  abdominal  pains  which, 
however,  were  so  slight  that  they  seldom  interfered  in 
any  way  with  their  usual  activities.  In  the  table  I  have 
counted  it  unusual  pain  whenever  a  girl  was  incapaci- 
tated for  work,  but  these  cases  were  in  no  sense  com- 
parable to  severe  cases  of  menstrual  cramps  in  our 
civilisation.  They  were  unaccompanied  by  dizziness, 
fainting  spells,  or  pain  sufficient  to  call  forth  groaning 
or  writhing.  The  idea  of  such  pain  struck  all  Samoan 
women  as  bizarre  and  humorous  when  it  was  described 
to  them.  And  no  special  solicitude  for  her  health, 
mental  or  physical,  was  shown  to  the  menstruating  girl. 
From  foreign  medical  advice  they  had  learned  that 
bathing  during  menstruation  was  bad,  and  a  mother 
occasionally  cautioned  her  daughter  not  to  bathe. 
There  was  no  sense  of  shame  connected  with  puberty 
nor  any  need  of  concealment.    Pre-adolescent  children 

[145] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

took  the  news  that  a  girl  had  reached  puberty,  a  woman 
had  had  a  baby,  a  boat  had  come  from  Ofu,  or  a  pig 
had  been  killed  by  a  falling  boulder  with  the  same  in- 
souciance— all  bits  of  diverting  gossip  j  and  any  girl 
could  give  accurate  testimony  as  to  the  development  of 
any  other  girl  in  her  neighbourhood  or  relationship 
groups.  Nor  was  puberty  the  immediate  forerunner  of 
sex  experience.  Perhaps  a  year,  two  or  even  three 
years  would  pass  before  a  girPs  shyness  would  relax,  or 
her  figure  appeal  to  the  roving  eye  of  some  older  boy. 
To  be  a  virgin's  first  lover  was  considered  the  high 
point  of  pleasure  and  amorous  virtuosity,  so  that  a 
girPs  first  lover  was  usually  not  a  boy  of  her  own  age, 
equally  shy  and  inexperienced.  The  girls  in  this  group 
were  divided  into  little  girls  like  Lua,  and  gawky  over- 
grown Tolo,  who  said  frankly  that  they  did  not  want 
to  go  walking  with  boys,  and  girls  like  Pala,  who  while 
still  virgins,  were  a  little  weary  of  their  status  and 
eager  for  amorous  experience.  That  they  remained  in 
this  passive  untouched  state  so  long  was  mainly  due  to 
the  conventions  of  love-making,  for  while  a  youth  liked 
to  woo  a  virgin,  he  feared  ridicule  as  a  cradle-snatcher, 
while  the  girls  also  feared  the  dreaded  accusation  of 
tautala  laititi  ("presuming  above  one's  age").  The 
forays  of  more  seasoned  middle-aged  marauders 
among  these  very  young  girls  were  frowned  upon,  and 
so  the  adolescent  girls  were  given  a  valuable  interval 
in  which  to  get  accustomed  to  new  work,  greater  isola- 
tion and  an  unfamiliar  physical  development. 

[146] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

The  next  older  girls  were  definitely  divided  as  to 
whether  or  not  they  lived  in  the  pastor's  households. 
A  glance  at  the  table  in  the  appendix  will  show  that 
among  the  girls  a  couple  of  years  past  puberty,  there  is 
a  definite  inverse  correlation  between  residence  at  home 
and  chastity,  with  only  one  exception,  Ela,  who  had 
been  forgiven  and  taken  back  into  the  household  of  a 
pastor  where  workers  were  short.  Ela's  best  friend 
was  her  cousin,  Talo,  the  only  girl  in  the  group  who 
had  sex  experience  before  menstruation  had  begun. 
But  Talo  was  clearly  a  case  of  delayed  menstruation  3 
all  the  other  signs  of  puberty  were  present.  Her  aunt 
shrugged  her  shoulders  in  the  face  of  Talo's  obvious 
sophistication  and  winning  charm  and  made  no  attempt 
to  control  her.  The  friendship  between  these  two 
girls  was  one  of  the  really  important  friendships  in  the 
whole  group.  Both  girls  definitely  proclaimed  their 
preference,  and  their  homosexual  practices  were  un- 
doubtedly instrumental  in  producing  Talo's  precocity 
and  solacing  Ela  for  the  stricter  regime  of  the  pastor's 
household. 

These  casual  homosexual  relations  between  girls 
never  assumed  any  long-time  importance.  On  the  part 
of  growing  girls  or  women  who  were  working  together 
they  were  regarded  as  a  pleasant  and  natural  diversion, 
just  tinged  with  the  salacious.  "Where  heterosexual 
relationships  were  so  casual,  so  shallowly  channelled, 
there  was  no  pattern  into  which  homosexual  relation- 
ships could  fall.    Native  theory  and  vocabulary  recog- 

[147] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

nised  the  real  pervert  who  was  incapable  of  normal 
heterosexual  response,  and  the  very  small  population  is 
probably  sufficient  explanation  for  the  rarity  of  these 
types.  I  saw  only  one,  Sasi,  a  boy  of  twenty  who  was 
studying  for  the  ministry.  He  was  slightly  but  not 
pronouncedly  feminine  in  appearance,  was  skilled  at 
women's  work  and  his  homosexual  drive  was  strong 
enough  to  goad  him  into  making  continual  advances  to 
other  boys.  He  spent  more  time  casually  in  the  com- 
pany of  girls,  maintained  a  more  easy-going  friendship 
with  them  than  any  other  boy  on  the  island.  Sasi  had 
proposed  marriage  to  a  girl  in  a  pastor's  household  in  a 
distant  village  and  been  refused,  but  as  there  was  a 
rule  that  divinity  students  must  marry  before  ordina- 
tion, this  has  little  significance.  I  could  find  no  evi- 
dence that  he  had  ever  had  heterosexual  relations  and 
the  girls'  casual  attitude  towards  him  was  significant. 
They  regarded  him  as  an  amusing  freak  while  the  men 
to  whom  he  had  made  advances  looked  upon  him  with 
mingled  annoyance  and  contempt.  There  were  no 
girls  who  presented  such  a  clear  picture  although  three 
/  of  the  deviants  discussed  in  the  next  chapter  were 
clearly  mixed  types,  without,  however,  showing  con- 
vincing evidence  of  genuine  perversion. 

The  general  preoccupation  with  sex,  the  attitude  that 

(minor  sex  activities,  suggestive  dancing,  stimulating 
salacious  conversation,  salacious  songs  and  definitely 
motivated  tussling  are  all  acceptable  and  attractive  di- 
versions, is  mainly  responsible  for  the  native  attitude 

[148] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

towards  homosexual  practices.  They  are  simply  flay^ 
neither  frowned  upon  nor  given  much  consideration. 
As  heterosexual  relations  are  given  significance  not  by 
love  and  a  tremendous  fixation  upon  one  individual, 
the  only  forces  which  can  make  a  homosexual  relation- 
ship lasting  and  important,  but  by  children  and  the 
place  of  marriage  in  the  economic  and  social  structure 
of  the  village,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  very  preva- 
lent homosexual  practices  have  no  more  important  or 
striking  results.  The  recognition  and  use  in  hetero- 
sexual relations  of  all  the  secondary  variations  of  sex 
activity  which  loom  as  primary  in  homosexual  relations 
are  instrumental  also  in  minimising  their  importance. 
The  effects  of  chance  childhood  perversions,  the  fixa- 
tion of  attention  on  unusual  erogenous  zones  with  con- 
sequent transfer  of  sensitivity  from  the  more  normal 
centres,  the  absence  of  a  definite  and  accomplished  spe- 
cialisation of  erogenous  zones — all  the  accidents  of 
emotional  development  which  in  a  civilisation,  recog- 
nising only  one  narrow  form  of  sex  activity,  result 
in  unsatisfactory  marriages,  casual  homosexuality  and 
prostitution,  are  here  rendered  harmless.  The  Samoan 
puts  the  burden  of  amatory  success  upon  the  man  and 
believes  that  women  need  more  initiating,  more  time 
for  the  maturing  of  sex  feeling.  A  man  who  fails  to 
satisfy  a  woman  is  looked  upon  as  a  clumsy,  inept  blun- 
derer, a  fit  object  for  village  ridicule  and  contempt. 
The  women  in  turn  are  conscious  that  their  lovers  use 
a  definite  technique  which  they  regard  with  a  sort  of 

[149] 


/ 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

fatalism  as  if  all  men  had  a  set  of  slightly  magical, 
wholly  irresistible,  tricks  up  their  sleeves.  But  ama- 
tory lore  is  passed  down  from  one  man  to  another  and 
is  looked  upon  much  more  self-consciously  and  ana- 
lytically by  men  than  by  women.  Parents  are  shy  of 
going  beyond  the  bounds  of  casual  conversation  (natu- 
rally these  are  much  wider  than  in  our  civilisation)  in 
the  discussion  of  sex  with  their  children,  so  that  defi- 
nite instruction  passes  from  the  man  of  twenty-five  to 
the  boy  of  eighteen  rather  than  from  father  to  son. 
The  girls  learn  from  the  boys  and  do  very  little  con- 
fiding in  each  other.  All  of  a  man's  associates  will 
know  every  detail  of  some  unusual  sex  experience  while 
the  girl  involved  will  hardly  have  confided  the  bare 
outlines  to  any  one.  Her  lack  of  any  confidants  except 
relatives  towards  whom  there  is  always  a  slight  barrier 
of  reserve  (I  have  seen  a  girl  shudder  away  from  act- 
ing as  an  ambassador  to  her  sister)  may  partly  account 
for  this. 

The  fact  that  educating  one  sex  in  detail  and  merely 
fortifying  the  other  sex  with  enough  knowledge  and 
familiarity  with  sex  to  prevent  shock  produces  normal 
sex  adjustments  is  due  to  the  free  experimentation 
which  is  permitted  and  the  rarity  with  which  both 
lovers  are  amateurs.  I  knew  of  only  one  such  case, 
where  two  children,  a  sixteen-year-old  boy  and  a 
fifteen-year-old  girl,  both  in  boarding  schools  on  an- 
other island,  ran  away  together.  Through  inexperi- 
ence they  bungled  badly.     They  were  both  expelled 

[.50] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL      ,^c  ,.      . 

from  school,  and  the  boy  is  now  a  man  of  twenty-four  crif<. 
with  high  intelligence  and  real  .charm,  but  a  notorious 
moetotoloy  execrated  by  every  girl  in  his  village.  Fa- 
miliarity with  sex,  and  the  recognition  of  a  need  of  a 
techniqueto  deal  with  sex  as  an  art,  have  produced  a 
scheme  of  personal  relations  in  which  there  are  no  neu- 
rotic pictures,  no  frigidity^  no  impotence,  except  as  the 
temporary  result  of  severe  illness,  and  the  capacityTor 
intercourse  only  once  in  a  night  is  counted  as  senility. 
Of  the  twenty-five  girls  past  puberty,  eleven  had  had 
heterosexual  experience.  Fala,  Tolu,  and  Namu  were 
three  cousins  who  were  popular  with  the  youths  of 
their  own  village  and  also  with  visitors  from  distant 
Fitiuta.  The  women  of  Fala's  family  were  of  easy 
virtue;  Tolu's  father  was  dead  and  she  lived  with  her 
blind  mother  in  the  home  of  Namu's  parents,  who, 
burdened  with  six  children  under  twelve  years  of  age, 
were  not  going  to  risk  losing  two  efficient  workers  by 
too  close  supervision.  The  three  girls  made  common 
rendezvous  with  their  lovers  and  their  liaisons  were 
frequent  and  gay.  Tolu,  the  eldest,  was  a  little  weary 
after  three  years  of  casual  adventures  and  professed 
herself  willing  to  marry.  She  later  moved  into  the 
household  of  an  important  chief  in  order  to  improve 
her  chances  of  meeting  strange  youths  who  might  be 
interested  In  matrimony.  Namu  was  genuinely  taken 
with  a  boy  from  Fitiuta  whom  she  met  in  secret  while 
a  boy  of  her  own  village  whom  her  parents  favoured 
courted  her  openly.    Occasional  assignations  with  other 

[151] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

boys  of  her  own  village  relieved  the  monotony  of  life 
between  visits  from  her  preferred  lover.  Fala,  the 
youngest,  was  content  to  let  matters  drift.  Her  lovers 
were  friends  and  relatives  of  the  lovers  of  her  cousins 
and  she  was  still  sufficiently  childlike  and  uninvolved 
to  get  almost  as  much  enjoyment  out  of  her  cousins' 
love  affairs  as  out  of  her  own.  All  three  of  these  girls 
worked  hard,  doing  the  full  quota  of  work  for  an 
adult.  All  day  they  fished,  washed,  worked  on  the 
plantation,  wove  mats  and  blinds.  Tolu  was  exception- 
ally clever  at  weaving.  They  were  valuable  economic 
assets  to  their  families}  they  would  be  valuable  to  the 
husbands  whom  their  families  were  not  over  anxious  to 
find  for  them. 

In  the  next  village  lived  Luna,  a  lazy  good-natured 
girl,  three  years  past  puberty.  Her  mother  was  dead. 
Her  father  had  married  again,  but  the  second  wife  had 
gone  back  to  her  own  people.  Luna  lived  for  several 
years  in  the  pastor's  household  and  had  gone  home 
when  her  stepmother  left  her  father.  Her  father  was 
a  very  old  chief,  tremendously  preoccupied  with  his 
prestige  and  reputation  in  the  village.  He  held  an 
important  title j  he  was  a  master  craftsman}  he  was  the 
best  versed  man  in  the  village  in  ancient  lore  and  de- 
tails of  ceremonial  procedure.  His  daughter  was  a 
devoted  and  efficient  attendant.  It  was  enough.  Luna 
tired  of  the  younger  girls  who  had  been  her  compan- 
ions in  the  pastor's  household  and  sought  instead  two 
young  married  women  among  her  relatives.     One  of 

[152] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

these,  a  girl  who  had  deserted  her  husband  and  was 
living  with  a  temporary  successor  came  to  live  in  Luna's 
household.  She  and  Luna  were  constant  companions, 
and  Luna,  quite  easily  and  inevitably  took  one  lover, 
then  two,  then  a  third — all  casual  affairs.  She  dressed 
younger  than  her  years,  emphasised  that  she  was  still 
a  girl.  Some  day  she  would  marry  and  be  a  church 
member,  but  now:  Laititi  a^u  ("I  am  but  young"). 
And  who  was  she  to  give  up  dancing. 

Her  cousin  Lotu  was  a  church  member,  and  had  at- 
tended the  missionary  boarding  school.  She  had  had 
only  one  accepted  lover,  the  illegitimate  son  of  a  chief 
who  dared  not  jeopardise  his  very  slender  chance  of 
succeeding  to  his  father's  title  by  marrying  her.  She 
was  the  eldest  of  nine  children,  living  in  the  third 
strictly  biological  family  in  the  village.  She  showed 
the  effects  of  greater  responsibility  at  home  by  a  quiet 
maturity  and  decision  of  manner,  of  her  school  train- 
ing in  a  greater  neatness  of  person  and  regard  for  the 
nicety  of  detail.  Although  she  was  transgressing,  the 
older  church  members  charitably  closed  their  eyes,  sym- 
pathising with  her  lover's  family  dilemma.  Her  only 
other  sex  experience  had  been  with  a  moetotoloy  a  rela- 
tive. Should  her  long  fidelity  to  her  lover  lead  to 
pregnancy,  she  would  probably  bear  the  child.  (When 
a  Samoan  woman  does  wish  to  avoid  giving  birth  to  a 
child,  exceedingly  violent  massage  and  the  chewing  of 
kava  is  resorted  to,  but  this  is  only  in  very  exceptional 
cases,  as  even  illegitimate  children  are  enthusiastically 

[■53] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

welcomed.)  Lotu's  attitudes  were  more  considered, 
more  sophisticated  than  those  o£  the  other  girls  of  her 
age.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  precarious  social  status 
of  her  lover,  she  would  probably  have  been  married 
already.  As  it  was,  she  laboured  over  the  care  of  her 
younger  brothers  and  sisters,  and  followed  the  routine 
of  relationship  duties  incumbent  upon  a  young  girl  in 
the  largest  family  on  the  island.  She  reconciled  her 
church  membership  and  her  deviation  from  chastity  by 
the  tranquil  reflection  that  she  would  have  married 
had  it  been  possible,  and  her  sin  rested  lightly  upon 
her. 

In  the  household  of  one  high  chief  lived  the  Samoan 
version  of  our  devoted  maiden  aunts.  She  was  docile, 
efficient,  responsible,  entirely  overshadowed  by  several 
more  attractive  girls.  To  her  were  entrusted  the  new- 
born babies  and  the  most  difficult  diplomatic  errands. 
Hard  work  which  she  never  resented  took  up  all  her 
time  and  energy.  When  she  was  asked  to  dance,  she 
did  so  negligently.  Others  dancing  so  much  more  bril- 
liantly, why  make  the  effort?  Hers  was  the  apprecia- 
tive worshipping  disposition  which  glowed  over  Tolu's 
beauty  or  Fala's  conquests  or  Alofi's  new  baby.  She 
played  the  ukulele  for  others  to  dance,  sewed  flower 
necklaces  for  others  to  wear,  planned  rendezvous  for 
others  to  enjoy,  without  humiliation  or  a  special  air  of 
martyrdom.  She  admitted  that  she  had  had  but  one 
lover.  He  had  come  from  far  awayj  she  didn't  even 
know  from  what  village,  and  he  had  never  come  back. 

[154] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

Yes,  probably  she  would  marry  some  day  if  her  chief 
so  willed  it,  and  was  that  the  baby  crying?  She  was 
the  stuff  of  whom  devoted  aunts  are  made,  depended 
upon  and  loved  by  all  about  her.  A  malaga  to  another 
village  might  have  changed  her  life,  for  Samoa  boys 
sought  strange  girls  merely  because  they  were  stran- 
gers. But  she  was  always  needed  at  home  by  some  one 
and  younger  girls  went  journeying  in  her  stead. 

Perhaps  the  most  dramatic  story  was  that  of  Moana, 
the  last  of  the  group  of  girls  who  lived  outside  the 
pastors'  households,  a  vain,  sophisticated  child,  spoiled 
by  years  of  trading  upon  her  older  half-sister's  devo- 
tion. Her  amours  had  begun  at  fifteen  and  by  the  time 
a  year  and  a  half  had  passed,  her  parents,  fearing  that 
her  conduct  was  becoming  so  indiscreet  as  to  seriously 
mar  her  chances  of  making  a  good  marriage,  asked  her 
uncle  to  adopt  her  and  attempt  to  curb  her  wayward- 
ness. This  uncle,  who  was  a  widower  and  a  sophisti- 
cated rake,  when  he  realised  the  extent  of  his  niece's 
experience,  availed  himself  also  of  her  complacency. 
This  incident,  not  common  in  Samoa,  because  of  the 
great  lack  of  privacy  and  isolation,  would  have  passed 
undetected  in  this  case,  if  Moana's  older  sister,  Sila, 
had  not  been  in  love  with  the  uncle  also.  This  was  the 
only  example  of  prolonged  and  intense  passion  which 
I  found  in  the  three  villages.  Samoans  rate  romantic 
fidelity  in  terms  of  days  or  weeks  at  most,  and  are  in- 
clined to  scoff  at  tales  of  life-long  devotion.  (They 
greeted  the  story  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  with  incredulous 

[155] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

contempt.)  But  Sila  was  devoted  to  Mutu,  her  step- 
father's younger  brother,  to  the  point  of  frenzy.  She 
had  been  his  mistress  and  still  lived  in  his  household, 
but  his  dilettantism  had  veered  away  from  her  indeco- 
rous intensity.  When  she  discovered  that  he  had  lived 
with  her  sister,  her  fury  knew  no  bounds.  Masked 
under  a  deep  solicitude  for  the  younger  girl,  whom 
she  claimed  was  an  innocent  untouched  child,  she  de- 
nounced Mutu  the  length  of  the  three  villages. 
Moana's  parents  fetched  her  home  again  in  a  great 
rage  and  a  family  feud  resulted.  Village  feeling  ran 
high,  but  opinion  was  divided  as  to  whether  Mutu  was 
guilty,  Moana  lying  to  cover  some  other  peccadillo  or 
Sila  gossiping  from  spite.  The  incident  was  in  direct 
violation  of  the  brother  and  sister  taboo  for  Mutu  was 
young  enough  for  Moana  to  speak  of  him  as  tuagane 
(brother).  But  when  two  months  later,  another  older 
sister  died  during  pregnancy,  it  was  necessary  to  find 
some  one  stout-hearted  enough  to  perform  the  neces- 
sary Csesarian  post-mortem  operation.  After  a  violent 
family  debate,  expediency  triumphed  and  Mutu,  most 
skilled  of  native  surgeons,  was  summoned  to  operate 
on  the  dead  body  of  the  sister  of  the  girl  he  had  vio- 
lated. When  he  later  on  announced  his  intention  of 
marrying  a  girl  from  another  island,  Sila  again  dis- 
played the  most  uncontrolled  grief  and  despair,  al- 
though she  herself  was  carrying  on  a  love  affair  at  the 
time. 

The  lives  of  the  girls  who  lived  in  the  pastor's 

[156] 


EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  AVERAGE  GIRL 

household  differed  from  those  of  their  less  restricted 
sisters  and  cousins  only  in  the  fact  that  they  had  no 
love  affairs  and  lived  a  more  regular  and  ordered  exist- 
ence. For  the  excitement  of  moonlight  trysts  they 
substituted  group  activities,  letting  the  pleasant  friend- 
liness of  a  group  of  girls  fill  their  lesser  leisure.  Their 
Interest  in  salacious  material  was  slightly  stronger  than 
the  interest  of  the  girls  who  were  free  to  experiment. 
They  made  real  friends  outside  their  relationship 
group,  trusted  other  girls  more,  worked  better  in  a 
group,  were  more  at  ease  with  one  another  but  less 
conscious  of  their  place  in  their  own  households  than 
were  the  others. 

With  the  exception  of  the  few  cases  to  be  discussed 
in  the  next  chapter,  adolescence  represented  no  period 
of  crisis  or  stress,  but  was  Instead  an  orderly  develop- 
ing of  a  set  of  slowly  maturing  Interests  and  activities. 
The  girls'  minds  were  perplexed  by  no  conflicts,  trou- 
bled by  no  philosophical  queries,  beset  by  no  remote 
ambitions.  To  live  as  a  girl  with  many  lovers  as  long 
as  possible  and  then  to  marry  in  one's  own  village, 
near  one's  own  relatives  and  to  have  many  children, 
these  were  uniform  and  satisfying  ambitions. 


[iJ7] 


XI 

THE    GIRL    IN    CONFLICT 

WERE  there  no  conflicts,  no  temperaments  which 
deviated  so  markedly  from  the  normal  that  clash  was 
inevitable?  Was  the  diffused  affection  and  the  dif- 
fused authority  of  the  large  families,  the  ease  of  mov- 
ing from  one  family  to  another,  the  knowledge  of  sex 
and'the  Treedom'F6~ experiment  a  sufficient  guarantee 
td~air^moan  girls  of  a  perfect  adjustment?  In  al- 
most  all  cases,  yes.  But  I  have  reserved  for  this  chap- 
ter the  tales  of  the  few  girls  who  deviated  in  ternpera- 
ment  or  in  conduct,  altlTough  Tn  many  cases  these  devi- 
ations  were~only_chair£ed  with  posslHilit-ips;  nf  mnflirtj 
and  actually  had  no  painful  results. 

The  girl  between  fourteen  and  twenty  stands  at  the 
centre  of  household  pressure  and  can  expend  her  irri- 
tation at  her  elders  on  those  over  whom  she  is  in  a 
position  of  authority.  The  possibility  of  escape  seems 
to  temper  her  restiveness  under  authority  and  the  irri- 
tation of  her  elders  also.  When  to  the  fear  of  a  use- 
ful worker's  running  away  is  added  also  the  fear  of  a 
daughter's  indulging  in  a  public  elopement,  and  thus 
lowering  her  marriage  value,  any  marked  exercise  of 
parental  authority  is  considerably  mitigated.  Violent^ 
outbursts  of  wrath  and  summary  chastisements  do  occur 

[158] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

but  consistent  and  prolonged  disciplinary  measures  are 
absent,  and  a  display  of  temper  is  likely  to  be  speedily 
followed  by  conciliatory  measures.  This,  of  course, 
applies  only  to  the  relation  between  a  girl  and  her 
elders.  Often  conflicts  of  personality  between  young 
people  of  the  same  age  in  a  household  are  not  so  tem- 
pered, but  the  removal  of  one  party  to  the  conflict,  the 
individual  with  the  weakest  claims  upon  the  household, 
is  here  also  the  most  frequent  solution.  The  fact  that 
the  age-group  gang  breaks  up  before  adolescence  and 
is  never  resumed  except  in  a  highly  formal  manner, 
coupled  with  the  decided  preference  for  household 
rather  than  group  solidarity,  accounts  for  the  scarcity 
of  conflict  here.  The  child  who  shuns  her  age  mates 
is  more  available  for  household  work  and  is  never  wor- 
ried by  questions  as  to  why  she  doesn't  run  and  play 
with  the  other  children.  On  the  other  hand,  the  tol- 
erance of  the  children  in  accepting  physical  defect  or 
slight  strangeness  of  temperament  prevents  any  child's 
suffering  from  undeserved  ostracism. 

The  child  who  is  unfavourably  located  in  the  vil- 
lage is  the  only  real  exile.  Should  the  age  group  last 
over  eight  or  ten  years  of  age,  the  exiles  would  cer- 
tainly suffer  or  very  possibly  as  they  grew  bolder,  ven- 
ture farther  from  home.  But  the  breakdown  of  the 
gang  just  as  the  children  are  bold  enough  and  free 
enough  to  go  ten  houses  from  home,  prevents  either 
of  these  two  results  from  occurring. 

The  absence  of  any  important  institutionalised  rela- 

[159] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

tlonship  to  the  community  is  perhaps  the  strongest  cause 
for  lack  of  conflict  here.  The  community  makes  no 
demands  upon  the  young  girls  except  for  the  occasional 
ceremonial  service  rendered  at  the  meetings  of  older 
women.  Were  they  delinquent  in  such  duties  it  would 
be  primarily  the  concern  of  their  own  households 
whose  prestige  would  suffer  thereby.  A  boy  who  re- 
fuses to  attend  the  meetings  of  the  Aumaga,  or  to  join 
in  the  communal  work,  comes  in  for  strong  group  dis- 
approval and  hostility,  but  a  girl  owes  so  small  a  debt 
to  her  community  that  it  does  not  greatly  concern  itself 
to  collect  it. 

The  opportunity  to  experiment  freely,  the  complete 
familiarity  with  sex  and  the  absence  of  very  violent 
preferences  make  her  sex  experiences  less  charged  with 
possibilities  of  conflict  than  they  are  in  a  more  rigid 
and  self-conscious  civilisation.  Cases  of  passionate 
jealousy  do  occur  but  they  are  matters  for  extended 
comment  and  amazement.  During  nine  months  in  the 
islands  only  tour  cases  came  to  my  attention,  a  girl 
who  informed  against  a  faithless  lover  accusing  him  of 
incest,  a  girl  who  bit  oJ0f  part  of  a  rival's  ear,  a  woman 
whose  husband  had  deserted  her  and  who  fought  and 
severely  injured  her  successor,  and  a  girl  who  falsely 
accused  a  rival  of  stealing.  But  jealousy  is  less  ex- 
pected and  less  sympathised  with  than  among  us,  and 
consequently  there  is  less  of  a  pattern  to  which  an  in- 
dividual may  respond.  Possibly  conditions  may  also 
be  simplified  by  the  Samoan  recognition  and  toleration 

[i6o] 


t- 


Q-^ 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

of  vindictive  detraction  and  growling  about  a  rivaL 
There  are  no  standards  of  good  form  which  prescribe 
an  insincere  acceptance  of  defeat,  no  insistence  on  reti- 
cence and  sportsmanship.  So  a  great  deal  of  slight 
irritation  can  be  immediately  dissipated.  Friendships 
are  of  so  casual  and  shifting  a  nature  that  they  give 
rise  to  neither  jealousy  nor  conflict.  Resentment  is 
expressed  by  subdued  grumblings  and  any  strong  re- 
sentment results  in  the  angry  one's  leaving  the  house- 
hold or  sometimes  the  village. 

In  the  girl's  religious  life  the  attitude  of  the  mis- 
sionaries was  the  decisive  one.  The  missionaries  require 
chastity  for  church  membership  and  discouraged  church 
membership  before  marriage,  except  for  the  young 
people  in  the  missionary  boarding  schools  who  could 
be  continually  supervised.  This  passive  acceptance  by 
the  religious  authorities  themselves  of  pre-marital  ir- 
regularities went  a  long  way  towards  minimising  the 
girls'  sense  of  guilt.  Continence  became  not  a  passport 
to  heaven  but  a  passport  to  the  missionary  schools 
which  in  turn  were  regarded  as  a  social  rather  than  a 
religious  adventure.  The  girl  who  indulged  in  sex 
experiments  was  expelled  from  the  local  pastor's  school, 
but  it  was  notable  that  almost  every  older  girl  in  the 
community,  including  the  most  notorious  sex  offenders, 
had  been  at  one  time  resident  in  the  pastors'  house- 
holds. The  general  result  of  the  stricter  supervision 
provided  by  these  schools  seemed  to  be  to  postpone  the 
first  sex  experience  two  or  three  years.    The  seven  girls 

[i6i] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

in  the  household  of  one  native  pastor,  the  three  in  the 
household  of  the  other,  were  all,  although  past  puberty, 
living  continent  lives,  in  strong  contrast  to  the  habits 
of  the  rest  of  their  age  mates. 

It  might  seem  that  there  was  fertile  material  for 
conflict  between  parents  who  wished  their  children  to 
live  in  the  pastor's  house  and  children  who  did  not 
wish  to  do  so,  and  also  between  children  who  wished 
it  and  parents  who  did  not.*  This  conflict  was  chiefly 
reduced  by  the  fact  that  residence  in  the  pastor's  house 
actually  made  very  little  difference  in  the  child's  status 
in  her  own  home.  She  simply  carried  her  roll  of  mats, 
her  pillow  and  her  mosquito  net  from  her  home  to  the 
pastor's,  and  the  food  which  she  would  have  eaten  at 
home  was  added  to  the  quota  of  the  food  which  her 
family  furnished  to  the  pastor.  She  ate  her  evening 
meal  and  slept  at  the  pastor's  j  one  or  two  days  a  week 
she  devoted  to  working  for  the  pastor's  family,  wash- 
ing, weaving,  weeding  and  sweeping  the  premises.  The 
rest  of  her  time  she  spent  at  home  performing  the 
usual  tasks  of  a  girl  of  her  age,  so  that  it  was  seldom 
that  a  parent  objected  strongly  to  sending  a  child  to 
the  pastor's.  It  involved  no  additional  expense  and 
was  likely  to  reduce  the  chances  of  his  daughter's  con- 
duct becoming  embarrassing,  to  improve  her  mastery 
of  the  few  foreign  techniques,  sewing,  ironing,  em- 
broidery, which  she  could  learn  from  the  more  skilled 
and  schooled  pastor's  wife  and  thus  increase  her  eco- 
nomic value. 

*See  Appendix,  page  257. 

[162] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  parents  wished  their  chil- 
dren to  stay  and  the  children  were  unwilling  to  do  so, 
the  remedy  was  simple.  They  had  but  to  transgress 
seriously  the  rules  of  the  pastor's  household,  and  they 
would  be  expelled  J  if  they  feared  to  return  to  their  i 
parents,  there  were  always  other  relatives. 

So  the  attitude  of  the  church  in  respect  to  chastity 
held  only  the  germs  of  a  conflict  which  was  seldom 
realised,  because  of  the  flexibility  with  which  it  adapted 
itself  to  the  nearly  inevitable.  Attendance  at  the  girls' 
main  boarding  school  was  an  attractive  prospect.  The 
fascination  of  living  in  a  large  group  of  young  people 
where  life  was  easier  and  more  congenial  than  at  home, 
was  usually  a  sufficient  bribe  to  good  behaviour,  or  at 
least  to  discretion.  Confession  of  sin  was  a  rare  phe- 
nomenon in  Samoa.  The  missionaries  had  made  a  rule 
that  a  boy  who  transgressed  the  chastity  rule  would  be 
held  back  in  his  progress  through  the  preparatory 
school  and  seminary  for  two  years  after  the  time  his 
offence  was  committed.  It  had  been  necessary  to  change 
this  ruling  to  read  two  years  from  the  detection  of  the 
ojfencey  because  very  often  the  off^ence  was  not  de- 
tected until  after  the  student  had  been  over  two  years! 
in  the  seminary,  and  under  the  old  ruling,  he  would 
not  have  been  punished  at  all.  Had  the  young  people 
been  inspired  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  to  a  heav- 
enly rather  than  an  earthly  decree  and  the  boy  or  girl 
been  answerable  to  a  recording  angel,  rather  than  a 
spying  neighbour,  religion  would  have  provided  a  real 

[163] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

setting  for  conflict.  If  such  an  attitude  had  been  cou- 
pled with  emphasis  upon  church  membership  for  the 
young  and  an  expectation  of  religious  experience  in  the 
lives  of  the  young,  crises  in  the  lives  of  the  young 
people  would  very  likely  have  occurred.  As  it  is,  the 
whole  religious  setting  is  one  of  formalism,  of  com- 
promise, of  acceptance  of  half  measure.  The  great 
number  of  native  pastors  with  their  peculiar  interpreta- 
tions of  Christian  teaching  have  made  it  impossible  to 
establish  the  rigour  of  western  Protestantism  with  its 
inseparable  association  of  sex  offences  and  an  individual 
consciousness  of  sin.  And  the  girls  upon  whom  the 
religious  setting  makes  no  demands,  make  no  demands 
upon  it.  They  are  content  to  follow  the  advice  of  their 
elders  to  defer  church  membership  until  they  are  older. 
Laitki  d*u.  Fia  siva  ("For  I  am  young  and  like  to 
dance").  The  church  member  is  forbidden  to  dance  or 
to  witness  a  large  night  dance.  One  of  the  three  vil- 
lages boasted  no  girl  church  members.  The  second 
village  had  only  one,  who  had,  however,  long  since 
transgressed  her  vows.  But  as  her  lover  was  a  youth 
whose  equivocal  position  in  his  family  made  it  impos- 
sible to  marry,  the  neighbours  did  not  tattle  where 
their  sympathies  were  aroused,  so  Lotu  remained  tacitly 
a  church  member.  In  the  third  village  there  were  two 
unmarried  girls  who  were  church  members,  Lita  and 
Ana. 

Lita  had  lived  for  years  in  the  pastor's  household  and 
with  one  other  girl,  showed  most  clearly  the  results  of 

[164] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

a  slightly  alien  environment.  She  was  clever  and 
executive,  preferred  the  society  of  girls  to  that  of  boys, 
had  made  the  best  of  her  opportunities  to  learn  Eng- 
lish, worked  hard  at  school,  and  wished  to  go  to  Tutuila 
and  become  a  nurse  or  a  teacher.  Her  ideals  were  thus 
just  such  as  might  frequently  be  found  from  any  ran- 
dom selection  of  girls  in  a  freshman  class  in  a  girls'  col- 
lege in  this  country.  She  coupled  this  set  of  individual 
ambitions  with  a  very  unusual  enthusiasm  for  a  pious 
father,  and  complied  easily  with  his  expressed  wish  for 
her  to  become  a  church  member.  After  she  left  the 
pastor's  household,  she  continued  to  go  to  school  and 
apply  herself  vigorously  to  her  studies,  and  her  one 
other  interest  in  life  was  a  friendship  with  an  older 
cousin  who  spoke  some  English  and  had  had  superior 
educational  advantages  in  another  island.  Although 
this  friendship  had  most  of  the  trappings  of  a  "crush" 
and  was  accompanied  by  the  casual  homosexual  practices 
which  are  the  usual  manifestations  of  most  associations 
between  young  people  of  the  same  sex,  Lita's  motivation 
was  more  definitely  ambition,  a  desire  to  master  every 
accessible  detail  of  this  alien  culture  in  which  she  wished 
to  find  a  place. 

Sona,  who  was  two  years  younger  than  Lita  and  had 
also  lived  for  several  years  in  the  pastor's  household, 
presented  a  very  similar  picture.  She  was  overbearing 
in  manner,  arbitrary  and  tyrannous  towards  younger 
people,  impudently  deferential  towards  her  elders. 
Without  exceptional  intellectual  capacity  she  had  excep- 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

tional  persistence  and  had  forced  her  way  to  the  head  of 
the  school  by  steady  dogged  application.  Lita,  more 
intelligent  and  more  sensitive,  had  left  school  for  one 
year  because  the  teacher  beat  her  and  Sona  had  passed 
above  her,  although  she  was  definitely  more  stupid. 
Sona  came  from  another  island.  Both  her  parents  were 
dead  and  she  lived  in  a  large,  heterogeneous  household, 
at  the  beck  and  call  of  a  whole  series  of  relatives.  Intent 
on  her  own  ends,  she  was  not  enthusiastic  about  all  this 
labour  and  was  also  unenthusiastic  about  most  of  her 
relatives.  But  one  older  cousin,  the  most  beautiful  girl 
in  the  village,  had  caught  her  imagination.  This  cousin, 
Manita,  was  twenty-seven  and  still  unmarried.  She  had 
had  many  suitors  and  nearly  as  many  lovers  but  she  was 
of  a  haughty  and  aggressive  nature  and  men  whom  she 
deemed  worthy  of  her  hand  were  wary  of  her  sophisti- 
cated domineering  manner.  By  unanimous  vote  she  was 
the  most  beautiful  girl  in  the  village.  Her  lovely 
golden  hair  had  contributed  to  half  a  dozen  ceremonial 
headdresses.  Her  strategic  position  in  her  own  family 
was  heightened  by  the  fact  that  her  uncle,  who  had  no 
hereditary  right  to  make  a  taupOy  had  declared  Manita 
to  be  his  tawpo.  There  was  no  other  taupo  in  the  vil- 
lage to  dispute  her  claim.  The  murmurings  were  dying 
out  J  the  younger  children  spoke  of  her  as  a  taupo  with- 
out suspicion  5  her  beauty  and  ability  as  a  dancer  made  it 
expedient  to  thus  introduce  her  to  visitors.  Her  family 
did  not  press  her  to  marry,  for  the  longer  she  remained 
unmarried,   the  stronger  waxed  the   upstart   legend. 

[i66] 


''y. 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

Her  last  lover  had  been  a  widowe;',  a  talking  chief  of 
intelligence  and  charm.  He  had  loved  Manita  but  he 
would  not  marry  her.  She  lacked  the  docility  which  he 
demanded  in  a  wife.  Leaving  Manita  he  searched  in 
other  villages  for  some  very  young  girl  whose  manners 
were  good  but  whose  character  was  as  yet  unformed. 

All  this  had  a  profound  effect  upon  Sona,  the  ugly 
little  stranger  over  whose  lustreless  eyes  cataracts  were 
already  beginning  to  form.  "Her  sister"  has  no  use  for 
marriage  j  neither  had  she,  Sona.  Essentially  unfemi- 
nine  in  outlook,  dominated  by  ambition,  she  bolstered 
up  her  preference  for  the  society  of  girls  and  a  career 
by  citing  the  example  of  her  beautiful,  wilful  cousin. 
Without  such  a  sanction  she  might  have  wavered  in  her 
ambitions,  made  so  difficult  by  her  already  failing  eye- 
sight. As  it  was  she  went  forward,  blatantly  proclaim- 
ing her  pursuit  of  ends  different  from  those  approved 
by  her  fellows.  Sona  and  Lita  were  not  friends  j  the 
difference  in  their  sanctions  was  too  great;  their  pro- 
ficiency at  school  and  an  intense  rivalry  divided  them. 
Sona  was  not  a  church  member.  It  would  not  have 
interfered  with  her  behaviour  in  the  least  but  it  was  part 
of  her  scheme  of  life  to  remain  a  school  girl  as  long  as 
possible  and  thus  fend  off  responsibilities.  So  she,  as 
often  as  the  others,  would  answer,  Laititi  a^u  ("I  am 
but  young").  While  Lita  attached  herself  to  her  cousin 
and  attempted  to  learn  from  her  every  detail  of  another 
life,  Sona  identified  herself  passionately  with  the 
slightly  more  Europeanlsed  family  of  the  pastor,  assert- 

[167] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ing  always  their  greater  relationship  to  the  new  civilisa- 
tion, calling  loane's  wife,  Mrs.  Johns,  building  up  a 
pitiable  platform  of  fafalagi  (foreign)  mannerisms  as 
a  springboard  for  future  activities. 

There  was  one  other  girl  church  member  of  Siufaga, 
Ana,  a  girl  of  nineteen.  Her  motives  were  entirely 
diflFerent.  She  was  of  a  mild,  quiescent  nature,  highly 
intelligent,  very  capable.  She  was  the  illegitimate  child 
of  a  chief  by  a  mother  who  had  later  married,  run  away, 
married  again,  been  divorced,  and  finally  gone  oflF  to 
another  island.  She  formed  no  tie  for  Ana.  Her 
father  was  a  widower,  living  in  a  brother's  house  and 
Ana  had  been  reared  in  the  family  of  another  brother. 
This  family  approximated  to  a  biological  onej  there 
were  two  married  daughters  older  than  Ana,  a  son  near 
her  age,  a  daughter  of  fourteen  and  a  crowd  of  little 
children.  The  father  was  a  gentle,  retiring  man  who 
had  built  his  house  outside  the  village,  "to  escape  from 
the  noise,"  he  said.  The  two  elder  daughters  married 
young  and  went  away  to  live  in  their  husbands'  house- 
holds. Ana  and  her  boy  cousin  both  lived  in  the  pastor's 
household,  while  the  next  younger  girl  slept  at  home. 
The  mother  had  a  great  distrust  of  men,  especially  of 
the  young  men  of  her  own  village.  Ana  should  grow 
up  to  marry  a  pastor.  She  was  not  strong  enough  for 
the  heavy  work  of  the  average  Samoan  wife.  Her 
aunt's  continuous  harping  on  this  strain,  which  was 
prompted  mainly  by  a  dislike  of  Ana's  mother  and  a 
fear  of  the  daughter's  leaving  home  to  follow  in  her 

[i68] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

mother's  footsteps,  had  convinced  Ana  that  she  was  a 
great  deal  too  delicate  for  a  normal  existence.  This 
theory  received  complete  verification  in  the  report  of 
the  doctor  who  examined  the  candidates  for  the  nursing 
school  and  rejected  her  because  of  a  heart  murmur. 
Ana,  influenced  by  her  aunt's  gloomy  foreboding,  was 
now  convinced  that  she  was  too  frail  to  bear  children,  or 
at  least  not  more  than  one  child  at  some  very  distant 
date.  She  became  a  church  member,  gave  up  dancing, 
clung  closer  to  the  group  of  younger  girls  in  the  pastor's 
school  and  to  her  foster  home,  the  neurasthenic  product 
of  a  physical  defect,  a  small,  isolated  family  group  and 
the  pastor's  school. 

These  girls  all  represented  the  deviants  from  the 
pattern  in  one  direction  j  they  were  those  who  demanded 
a  different  or  improved  environment,  who  rejected  the 
traditional  choices.  At  any  time,  they,  like  all  deviants, 
might  come  into  real  conflict  with  the  group.  That  they 
did  not  was  an  accident  of  environment.  The  younger 
girls  in  the  pastor's  group  as  yet  showed  fewer  signs  of 
being  influenced  by  their  slightly  artificial  environment. 
They  were  chaste  where  they  would  not  otherwise  have 
been  chaste,  they  had  friends  outside  their  relationship 
group  whom  they  would  otherwise  have  viewed  with 
suspicion,  they  paid  more  attention  to  their  lessons. 
They  still  had  not  acquired  a  desire  to  substitute  any 
other  career  for  the  traditional  one  of  marriage.  This 
was,  of  course,  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  pastor's 
school  was  simply  one  influence  in  their  lives.    The  girls 

[169] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

still  spent  the  greater  proportion  of  their  waking  time  at 
home  amid  conventional  surroundings.  Unless  a  girl 
was  given  some  additional  stimulus,  such  as  unusual 
home  conditions,  or  possessed  peculiarities  of  tempera- 
ment, she  was  likely  to  pass  through  the  school  essen- 
tially unchanged  in  her  fundamental  view  of  life.  She 
would  acquire  a  greater  respect  for  the  church,  a  pref- 
erence for  slightly  more  fastidious  living,  greater  confi- 
dence in  other  girls.  At  the  same  time  the  pastor's 
school  offered  a  sufficient  contrast  to  traditional  Samoan 
life  to  furnish  the  background  against  which  deviation 
could  flourish.  Girls  who  left  the  village  and  spent 
several  years  in  the  boarding  school  under  the  tutelage 
of  white  teachers  were  enormously  influenced.  Many 
of  them  became  nurses j  the  majority  married  pastors, 
usually  a  deviation  in  attitude,  involving  as  it  did, 
acceptance  of  a  different  style  of  living. 

So,  while  religion  itself  offered  little  field  for  con- 
flict^  the  institutions  promoted  by  religion  might  act  as 
stimuli  to'  new  choices  and  when  sufficiently  reinforced 
by  other  conditions  might  produce  a  type  of  girl  who 
deviated  markedly  from  her  companions*".  That  the 
majority  of  Samoan  girls  are  still  unaffected  by  thesef 
influences  and  pursue  uncritically  the  traditional  mode 
of  life  is  simply  a  testimony  to  the  resistance  of  the 
native  culture,  which  in'  its  present  slightly  Euro- 
peanised  state,  is  replete  with  easy  solutions  for  all  con- 
flicts} and  to  the  apparent  fact  that  adolescent  girls  in 

[170] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

Samoa  do  not  generate  their  own  conflicts,  but  require  a' 
vigorous  stimulus  to  produce  them. 

These  conflicts  which  have  been  discussed  are  con- 
flicts of  children  who  deviate  upwards,  who  wish  to 
exercise  more  choice  than  is  traditionally  permissible, 
and  who,  in  making  their  choices,  come  to  unconven- 
tional and  bizarre  solutions.  The  untraditional  choices 
which  are  encouraged  by  the  educational  system  inaugu- 
rated by  the  missionaries  are  education  and  the  pursuit 
of  a  career  and  marriage  outside  of  the  local  group  (in 
the  case  of  native  pastors,  teachers  and  nurses),  prefer- 
rence  for  the  society  of  one's  own  sex  through  prolonged 
and  close  association  in  school,  a  self-conscious  evalua- 
tion of  existence,  and  the  consequent  making  of  self- 
conscious  choices.  All  of  these  make  for  increased  spe- 
cialisation, increased  sophistication,  greater  emphasis 
upon  individuality,  where  an  individual  makes  a  con- 
scious choice  between  alternate  or  opposing  lines  of 
conduct.  In  the  case  of  this  group  of  girls,  it  is  evident 
that  the  mere  presentation  of  conflicting  choices  was  not 
sufficient  but  that  real  conflict  required  the  yeast  of  a 
need  for  choice  and  in  addition  a  culturally  favourable 
batter  in  which  to  work. 

It  will  now  be  necessary  to  discuss  another  type  of 
deviant,  the  deviant  in  a  downward  direction,  or  the 
delinquent.  I  am  using  the  term  delinquent  to  describe 
the  individual  who  is  maladjusted  to  the  demands  of 
her  civilisation,  and  who  comes  definitely  into  conflict 

[171] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

with  her  group,  not  because  she  adheres  to  a  diflferent 
standard,  but  because  she  violates  the  group  standards 
which  are  also  her  own.* 

A  Samoan  family  or  a  Samoan  community  might 
easily  come  to  conceive  the  conduct  and  standards  of 
Sona  and  Lita  as  anti-social  and  undesirable.  Each  was 
following  a  plan  of  life  which  would  not  lead  to  mar- 
riage and  children.  Such  a  choice  on  the  part  of  the 
females  of  any  human  community  is,  of  course,  likely  to 
be  frowned  upon.  The  girls  who,  responding  to  the 
same  stimuli,  follow  Sona's  and  Lita's  example  in  the 
future  will  also  run  this  risk. 

But  were  there  really  delinquent  girls  in  this  little 
primitive  village,  girls  who  were  incapable  of  develop- 

*  Such  a  distinction  might  well  be  made  in  the  attitude  towards 
delinquency  in  our  own  civilisation.  Delinquency  cannot  be  de- 
fined even  within  one  culture  in  terms  of  acts  alone,  but  attitudes 
should  also  be  considered.  Thus  the  child  who  rifles  her  mother's 
purse  to  get  money  to  buy  food  for  a  party  or  clothes  to  wear  to 
a  dance  hall,  who  believes  stealing  is  wrong,  but  cannot  or  will  not 
resist  the  temptation  to  steal,  is  a  delinquent,  if  the  additional  legal 
definition  is  given  to  her  conduct  by  bringing  her  before  some  judi- 
cial authority.  The  young  Christian  communist  who  gives  away  her 
own  clothes  and  also  those  of  her  brothers  and  sisters  may  be  a 
menace  to  her  family  and  to  a  society  based  upon  private  property, 
but  she  is  not  delinquent  in  the  same  sense.  She  has  simply  chosen 
an  alternative  standard.  The  girl  who  commits  sex  ofifences  with 
all  attendant  shame,  guilt,  and  inability  to  defend  herself  from  be- 
coming continually  more  involved  in  a  course  of  action  which  she 
is  conscious  is  "wrong,"  until  she  becomes  a  social  problem  as  an 
unmarried  mother  or  a  prostitute,  is,  of  course,  delinquent.  The 
young  advocate  of  free  love  who  possesses  a  full  quiver  of  ideals 
and  sanctions  for  her  conduct,  may  be  undesirable,  but  from  the 
standpoint  of  this  discussion,  she  is  not  delinquent. 

[172] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

ing  new  standards  and  incapable  of  adjusting  them- 
selves to  the  old  ones?  My  group  included  two  girls 
who  might  be  so  described,  one  girl  who  was  just  reach- 
ing puberty,  the  other  a  girl  two  years  past  puberty. 
Their  delinquency  was  not  a  new  phenomenon,  but  in 
both  cases  dated  back  several  years.  The  members  of 
their  respective  groups  unhesitatingly  pronounced  them 
"bad  girls,"  their  age  mates  avoided  them,  and  their 
relatives  regretted  them.  As  the  Samoan  village  had 
no  legal  machinery  for  dealing  with  such  cases,  these  are 
the  nearest  parallels  which  it  is  possible  to  draw  with 
our  "delinquent  girl,"  substituting  definite  conflict  with 
unorganised  group  disapproval  for  the  conflict  with  the 
law  which  defines  delinquency  in  our  society. 

Lola  was  seventeen,  a  tall,  splendidly  developed,  in- 
telligent hoyden.  She  had  an  unusual  endowment  in 
her  capacity  for  strong  feeling,  for  enthusiasms,  for 
violent  responses  to  individuals.  Her  father  had  died 
when  she  was  a  child  and  she  had  been  reared  in  a  head- 
less house.  Her  father's  brother  who  was  the  matai 
had  several  houses  and  he  had  scattered  his  large  group 
of  dependants  in  several  different  parts  of  the  village. 
So  Lola,  two  older  sisters,  two  younger  sisters,  and  a 
brother  a  year  older,  were  brought  up  by  their  mother, 
a  kindly  but  ineffective  woman.  The  eldest  sister  mar- 
ried and  left  the  village  when  Lola  was  eight.  The 
next  sister,  Sami,  five  years  older  than  Lola,  was  like 
her  mother,  mild  and  gentle,  with  a  soft  undercurrent 
of  resentment  towards  life  running  through  all  her 

[173] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

quiet  words.  She  resented  and  disliked  her  younger 
sister  but  she  was  no  macch  for  her.  Nito,  her  brother, 
was  a  high-spirited  and  intelligent  youth  who  might 
have  taught  his  sister  a  little  wisdom  had  it  not  been 
for  the  brother  and  s'lsttr  taboo  which  kept  them  always 
upon  a  formal  footing.  Aso,  two  years  younger,  was 
like  Sami  without  Sami's  sullen  resentment.  She 
adopted  the  plan  of  keeping  out  of  Lola's  way.  The 
youngest,  Siva,  was  like  Lola,  intelligent,  passionate, 
easily  aroused,  but  she  was  only  eleven  and  merely 
profited  by  her  sister's  bad  example.  Lola  was  quarrel- 
some, insubordinate,  impertinent.  She  contended  every 
point,  objected  to  every  request,  shirked  her  work, 
fought  with  her  sisters,  mocked  her  mother,  went  about 
the  village  with  a  chip  upon  her  shoulder.  When  she 
was  fourteen,  she  became  so  unmanageable  at  home  that 
her  uncle  sent  her  to  live  in  the  pastor's  household.  She 
stayed  there  through  a  year  of  stormy  scenes  until  she 
was  finally  expelled  after  a  fight  with  Mala,  the  other 
delinquent.  That  she  was  not  expelled  sooner  was  out 
of  deference  to  her  rank  as  the  niece  of  a  leading  chief. 
Her  uncle  realised  the  folly  of  sending  her  back  to  her 
mother.  She  was  almost  sixteen  and  well  developed 
physically;  and  could  be  expected  to  add  sex  offences  to 
the  list  of  her  troublesome  activities  at  any  moment. 
He  took  her  to  live  in  his  own  household  under  the 
supervision  of  his  very  strong-minded,  executive  wife, 
Pusa.  Lola  stayed  there  almost  a  year.  It  was  a  more 
interesting  household  than  any  in  which  she  had  lived. 

[274] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

Her  uncle's  rank  made  constant  calls  upon  her.  She 
learned  to  make  kava  well,  to  dance  with  greater  ease 
and  mastery.  A  trip  to  Tutuila  relieved  the  monotony 
of  life  J  two  cousins  from  another  island  came  to  visit, 
and  there  was  much  gaiety  about  the  house.  As  con- 
sciousness of  sex  became  more  acute,  she  became  slightly 
subdued  and  tentative  in  her  manner.  Pusa  was  a  hard 
task  master  and  for  a  while  Lola  seemed  to  enjoy  the 
novelty  of  a  strong  will  backed  by  real  authority. 
But  the  novelty  wore  oflF.  The  cousins  prolonged  their 
visit  month  after  month.  They  persisted  in  treating 
her  as  a  child.  She  became  bored,  sullen,  jealous. 
Finally  she  ran  away  to  other  relatives,  a  very  high 
chief's  family,  in  the  next  village.  Here,  temporarily, 
was  another  house  group  of  women  folk,  as  the  head  of 
the  house  was  in  Tutuila,  and  his  wife,  his  mother  and 
his  two  children  were  the  only  occupants  of  the  great 
guest  house.  Lola's  labour  was  welcomed,  and  she  set 
herself  to  currying  favour  with  the  high  chief  of  the 
family.  At  first  this  was  quite  easy,  as  she  had  run 
away  from  the  household  of  a  rival  chief  and  he  appre- 
ciated her  public  defection.  There  were  only  much 
younger  or  much  older  girls  in  his  household.  Lola 
received  the  attention  which  she  craved.  The  little 
girls  resented  her,  but  secretly  admired  her  dashing 
uncompromising  manner.  But  she  had  only  been  estab- 
lished here  about  a  month  when  another  chief,  with  a 
young  and  beautiful  taupo  in  his  train,  came  to  visit 
her  new  chief  and  the  whole  party  was  lodged  in  the 

[175] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

very  house  where  she  slept.  Now  began  an  endless 
round  of  hospitable  tasks,  and  worst  of  all  she  must  wait 
upon  the  pretty  stranger  who  was  a  year  younger  than 
herself,  but  whose  rank  as  visiting  taufo  gave  her  prec- 
edence. Lola  again  became  troublesome.  She  quar- 
relled with  the  younger  girls,  was  impertinent  to  the 
older  ones,  shirked  her  work,  talked  spitefully  against 
the  stranger.  Perhaps  all  of  this  might  have  been  only 
temporary  and  had  no  more  far-reaching  results  than  a 
temporary  lack  of  favour  in  her  new  household,  had  it 
not  been  for  a  still  more  unfortunate  event.  The  Don 
Juan  of  the  village  was  a  sleek,  discreet  man  of  about 
forty,  a  widower,  a  mataiy  a  man  of  circumspect  manner 
and  winning  ways.  He  was  looking  for  a  second  wife 
and  turned  his  attention  toward  the  visitor  who  was 
lodged  in  the  guest  house  of  the  next  village.  But 
Fuativa  was  a  cautious  and  calculating  lover.  He 
wished  to  look  over  his  future  bride  carefully  and  so  he 
visited  her  house  casually,  without  any  declaration  of 
his  intention.  And  he  noticed  that  Lola  had  reached  a 
robust  girlhood  and  stopped  to  pluck  this  ready  fruit 
by  the  way,  while  he  was  still  undecided  about  the  more 
serious  business  of  matrimony. 

With  all  her  capacity  for  violence,  Lola  possessed 
also  a  strong  capacity  for  affection.  Fuativa  was  a 
skilled  and  considerate  lover.  Few  girls  were  quite  so 
fortunate  in  their  first  lovers,  and  so  few  felt  such  un- 
mixed regret  when  the  first  love  affair  was  broken  off. 
Fuativa  won  her  easily  and  after  three  weeks  which 

[176] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

were  casual  to  him,  and  very  important  to  her,  he  pro- 
posed for  the  hand  of  the  visitor.  The  proposal  itself 
might  not  have  so  completely  enraged  Lola  although 
her  pride  was  sorely  wounded.  Still,  plans  to  marry  a 
bride  from  such  a  great  distance  might  miscarry.  But 
the  affiaiiced  girl  so  obviously  demurred  from  the  mar- 
riage that  the  talking  chiefs  became  frightened.  Fua- 
tiva  was  a  rich  man  and  the  marriage  ceremony  would 
bring  many  perquisites  for  the  talking  chief.  If  the  girl 
was  allowed  to  go  home  and  plead  with  her  parents,  or 
given  the  opportunity  to  elope  with  some  one  else,  there 
would  be  no  wedding  perhaps  and  no  rewards.  The 
public  defloration  ceremony  is  forbidden  by  law.  That 
the  bridegroom  was  a  government  employe  would  fur- 
ther complicate  his  position  should  he  break  the  law. 
So  the  anxious  talking  chief  and  the  anxious  suitor  made 
their  plans  and  he  was  given  access  to  his  future  bride. 
The  rage  of  Lola  was  unbounded  and  she  took  an  im- 
mediate revenge,  publicly  accusing  her  rival  of  being  a 
thief  and  setting  the  whole  village  by  the  ears.  The 
women  of  the  host  household  drove  her  out  with  many 
imprecations  and  she  fled  home  to  her  mother,  thus 
completing  the  residence  cycle  begun  four  years  ago. 
She  was  now  in  the  position  of  the  delinquen:  in  our 
society.  She  had  continuously  violated  the  group, 
standards  and  she  had  exhausted  all  the  solutions  open: 
to  her.  No  other  family  group  would  open  its  doors  to 
a  girl  whose  record  branded  her  as  a  liar,  a  trouble 
maker,  a  fighter,  and  a  thief,  for  her  misdeeds  included 

[177] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

continual  petty  thievery.  Had  she  quarrelled  with  a 
father  or  been  outraged  by  a  brother-in-law,  a  refuge 
would  have  been  easy  to  find.  But  her  personality  was 
essentially  unfortunate.  In  her  mother's  household  she 
made  her  sisters  miserable,  but  she  did  not  lord  it  over 
them  as  she  had  done  before.  She  was  sullen,  bitter, 
vituperative.  The  young  people  of  the  village  branded 
her  as  the  possessor  of  a  lotu  le  aga,  ("a  bad  heart") 
and  she  had  no  companions.  Her  young  rival  left  the 
island  to  prepare  for  her  wedding,  or  the  next  chapter 
might  have  been  Lola's  doing  her  actual  physical  vio- 
lence. When  I  left,  she  was  living,  idle,  sullen,  and 
defiant  in  her  long-suifering  mother's  house. 

Mala's  sins  were  slightly  otherwise.  Where  Lola 
was  violent,  Mala  was  treacherous  j  where  Lola  was 
antagonistic.  Mala  was  insinuating.  Mala  was  younger, 
having  just  reached  puberty  in  January,  the  middle  of 
my  stay  on  the  island.  She  was  a  scrawny,  ill-favoured 
little  girl,  always  untidily  dressed.  Her  parents  were 
dead  and  she  lived  with  her  uncle,  a  sour,  disgruntled 
man  of  small  position.  His  wife  came  from  another 
village  and  disliked  her  present  home.  The  marriage 
was  childless.  The  only  other  member  of  the  house 
group  was  another  niece  who  had  divorced  her  hus- 
band. She  also  was  childless.  None  showed  Mala  any 
affection,  and  they  worked  her  unmercifully.  The  life 
of  the  only  young  girl  or  boy  in  a  Samoan  house,  in  the 
very  rare  cases  when  it  occurs,  is  always  very  difficult. 
In  this  case  it  was  doubly  so.   Ordinarily  other  relatives 

[178] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

in  the  neighbourhood  would  have  handed  their  babies 
over  to  her  care,  giving  her  a  share  in  the  activities  of 
happier  and  more  populous  households.  But  from  her 
early  childhood  she  had  been  branded  as  a  thief,  a 
dangerous  charge  in  a  country  where  there  are  no  doors 
or  locks,  and  houses  are  left  empty  for  a  day  at  a  time. 
Her  first  offence  had  been  to  steal  a  foreign  toy  which 
belonged  to  the  chief's  little  son.  The  irate  mother 
had  soundly  berated  the  child,  on  boat  day,  on  the  beach 
where  all  the  people  were  gathered.  When  her  name 
was  mentioned,  the  information  that  she  was  a  thief 
and  a  liar  was  tacked  on  as  casually  as  was  the  remark 
that  another  was  cross-eyed  or  deaf.  Other  children 
avoided  her.  Next  door  lived  Tino,  a  dull  good  child, 
a  few  months  younger  than  Mala.  Ordinarily  these 
two  would  have  been  companions  and  Mala  always  in- 
sisted that  Tino  was  her  friend,  but  Tino  indignantly 
disclaimed  all  association  with  her.  And  as  if  her  repu- 
tation for  thievery  were  not  sufficient,  she  added  a  fur- 
ther misdemeanour.  She  played  with  boys,  preferred 
boys'  games,  tied  her  lavalava  like  a  boy.  This  be- 
haviour was  displayed  to  the  whole  village  who  were 
vociferous  in  their  condemnation.  "She  really  was  a 
very  bad  girl.  She  stole  j  she  liedj  and  she  played 
with  boys."  As  in  other  parts  of  the  world,  the  whole 
odium  fell  on  the  girl,  so  the  boys  did  not  fight  shy  of 
her.  They  teased  her,  bullied  her,  used  her  as  general 
errand  boy  and  fag.  Some  of  the  more  precocious  boys 
of  her  own  age  were  already  beginning  to  look  to  her 

[179] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

for  possibilities  of  other  forms  of  amusement.  Prob- 
ably she  will  end  by  giving  her  favours  to  whoever  asks 
for  them,  and  sink  lower  and  lower  in  the  village  esteem 
and  especially  in  the  opinion  of  her  own  sex  from  whom 
she  so  passionately  desires  recognition  and  affection. 
I  Lola  and  Mala  both  seemed  to  be  the  victims  of  lack 
if  of  affection.  They  both  had  unusual  capacity  for  devo- 
II  tion  and  were  abnormally  liable  to  become  jealous. 
Both  responded  with  pathetic  swiftness  to  any  mani- 
festations of  affection.  At  one  end  of  the  scale  in  their 
need  for  affection,  they  were  unfortunately  placed  at 
the  other  end  in  their  chance  of  receiving  it.  Lola  had 
a  double  handicap  in  her  unfortunate  temperament  and 
the  greater  amiability  of  her  three  sisters.  Her  tem- 
peramental defects  were  further  aggravated  by  the 
absence  of  any  strong  authority  in  her  immediate  house- 
hold. Sami,  the  docile  sister,  had  been  saddled  with  the 
care  of  the  younger  children  j  Lola,  harder  to  control, 
was  given  no  such  saving  responsibility.  These  condi- 
tions were  all  as  unusual  as  her  demand  and  capacity 
for  affection.  And,  similarly,  seldom  were  children  as 
desolate  as  Mala,  marooned  in  a  household  of  un- 
sympathetic adults.  So  it  would  appear  that  their  de- 
linquency was  produced  by  the  combination  of  two  sets 
of  casual  factors,  unusual  emotional  needs  and  unusual 
home  conditions.  Less  affectionate  children  in  the  same 
environments,  or  the  same  children  in  more  favourable 
surroundings,  probably  would  never  have  become  as 
definitely  outcast  as  these. 

[i8o] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

Only  one  other  girl  in  the  three  villages  calls  for 
consideration  under  this  conception  of  delinquency  and 
she  received  far  less  general  condemnation  than  either 
of  the  others.  This  was  Sala,  who  lived  in  the  third 
village.  She  lived  in  a  household  of  seven,  consisting 
of  her  widowed  mother,  her  younger  brother  of  ten, 
her  grandmother,  her  uncle  and  his  wife,  and  their 
two-year-old  son.  This  presented  a  fairly  well-bal- 
anced family  group  and  there  were  in  addition  many 
other  relatives  close  by.  Sala  had  been  sent  to  live  in 
the  pastor's  house  but  had  speedily  got  involved  in  sex 
offences  and  been  expelled.  Her  attitude  towards  this 
pastor  was  still  one  of  unveiled  hostility.  She  was 
stupid,  underhanded,  deceitful  and  she  possessed  no 
aptitude  for  the  simplest  mechanical  tasks.  Her  inept- 
ness  was  the  laughing  stock  of  the  village  and  her  lovers 
were  many  and  casual,  the  fathers  of  illegitimate  chil- 
dren, men  whose  wives  were  temporarily  absent,  wit- 
less boys  bent  on  a  frolic.  It  was  a  saying  among  the 
girls  of  the  village  that  Sala  was  apt  at  only_one  art, 
sex,  and  that  she,  who  couldn't  even  sew  thatch  or 
weave  blinds,  would  never  get  a  husband.  The  social 
attitude  towards  her  was  one  of  contempt,  rather  than 
of  antagonism,  and  she  had  experienced  it  keenly 
enough  to  have  sunk  very  low  in  her  own  eyes.  She 
had  a  sullen  furtive  manner,  lied  extravagantly  in  her 
assertions  of  skill  and  knowledge,  and  was  ever  on 
the  alert  for  slights  and  possible  innuendoes.  She  came 
into  no  serious  conflict  with  her  community.    Her  father 

[i8i] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

beat  her  occasionally  in  a  half-hearted  manner,  but  her 
stupidity  was  her  salvation  for  the  Samoan  possesses 
more  charity  towards  weakness  than  towards  mis- 
directed strength.  Sooner  or  later  Sala's  random  sex 
experiences  will  probably  lead  to  pregnancy,  resulting 
in  a  temporary  restriction  of  her  activities  and  a  much 
greater  dependency  upon  her  family.  This  economic 
dependence  which  in  her  case  will  be  reinforced  by  her 
lack  of  manual  skill  will  be  strong  enough  to  give  her 
family  a  whip  hand  over  her  and  force  her  to  at  least 
moderate  her  experimentation.  She  may  not  marry  for 
many  years  and  possibly  will  always  be  rated  too  in- 
efficient for  such  responsibility. 

The  only  delinquent  in  the  making,  that  is  a  child 
who  showed  marked  possibilities  of  increasing  mis- 
behaviour, was  Siva,  Lola's  eleven-year-old  little  sis- 
ter. She  had  the  same  obstreperous  nature  and  was 
always  engaging  in  fist  fights  with  the  other  children, 
or  hurling  deadly  insults  after  fleeing  backs.  She  Jiad 
the  same  violent  craving  for  affection.  But  her  uncle, 
profiting  by  her  sister's  unfortunate  development,  had 
taken  her  at  the  age  of  ten  into  his  immediate  family 
and  so  she  was  spending  her  pre-adolescent  years  under 
a  much  firmer  regime  than  had  her  sister.  And  she 
differed  from  her  sister  in  one  respect,  which  was 
likely  to  prove  her  salvation.  Where  Lola  had  no  sense 
of  humour  and  no  lightness  of  touch,  Siva  had  both. 
She  was  a  gifted  mimic,  an  excruciatingly  funny  dancer, 
a  born  comedian.    People  forgave  her  her  violence  and 

[182] 


THE  GIRL  IN  CONFLICT 

her  quarrelsomeness  for  sheer  mirth  over  her  propitia- 
tory antics.  If  this  facility  continues  to  endear  her  to 
her  aunts  and  cousins,  who  already  put  up  with  any 
number  of  pranks  and  fits  of  temper  from  her,  she  will 
probably  not  follow  in  her  sister's  steps.  One  affection- 
ate word  makes  her  shift  her  attention,  and  she  has  a 
real  gift  for  affection.  Once  at  a  dancing  party  I  had 
especially  requested  the  children  to  be  good  and  not 
waste  time  in  endless  bickerings  and  jealousies.  I 
selected  three  little  girls,  the  traditional  number,  to 
dance,  and  one  of  them,  Meta,  claimed  that  she  had  a 
sore  foot.  I  turned  hastily  to  Siva  and  asked  her  to 
fill  out  the  figure.  She  was  preparing  to  do  so,  with 
none  too  good  grace  at  being  second  choice,  when  Meta, 
who  had  merely  been  holding  back  for  more  urging, 
leaped  to  her  feet,  and  took  the  empty  place.  Siva  was 
doubling  up  her  fists  ready  to  fly  at  M eta's  throat  when 
she  caught  my  eye.  She  swallowed  furiously,  and  then 
jerked  the  flower  wreath  from  around  her  own  neck  and 
flung  it  over  Meta's  head.  With  better  luck  than  her 
sister,  she  will  not  come  into  lasting  conflict  with  her 
society. 

And  here  ends  the  tale  of  serious  conflict  or  serious 
deviation  from  group  standards.  The  other  girls  varied 
as  to  whether  they  were  subjected  to  the  superior  super- 
vision of  the  pastor's  household  or  not,  as  to  whether 
they  came  from  households  of  rank  or  families  of  small 
prestige,  and  most  of  all  as  to  whether  they  lived  in  a 
biological  family  or  a  large  heterogeneous  household. 

[183] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

/ 
I  ii  But  with  differences  in  temperament  equal  to  those 

*|  found  among  us,  though  with  a  possibly  narrower  range 
;    of  intellectual  ability,  they  showed  a  surprising  uni- 
formity of  knowledge,  skill  and  attitude,  and  presented 
a  picture  of  orderly,  regular  development  in  a  flexible, 
but  strictly  delimited,  environment. 


[184] 


XII 

MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE 

BECAUSE  the  community  makes  no  distinction  be- 
tween  unmarried  girls  and  the  wives  of  untitled  men  in  | 
the  demands  which  it  makes  upon  them,  and  because 
there  is  seldom  any  difference  in  sex  experience  between 
the  two  groups,  the  dividing  line  falls  not  between  mar- 
ried and  unmarried  but  between  grown  women  and 
growing  girls  in  industrial  activity  and  between  the 
wives  of  matals  and  their  less  important  sisters  in  cere- 
monial affairs.  The  girl  of  twenty-two  or  twenty-three 
who  is  still  unmarried  loses  her  laissez  faire  attitude. 
Family  pressure  is  an  effective  cause  in  bringing  about 
this  change.  She  is  an  adult,  as  able  as  her  married 
sisters  and  her  brothers'  young  wives  j  she  is  expected 
to  contribute  as  heavily  as  they  to  household  under- 
takings. She  lives  among  a  group  of  contemporaries 
upon  whom  the  responsibilities  of  marriage  are  making 
increased  demands.  Rivalry  and  emulation  enter  in. 
And  also  she  may  be  becoming  a  little  anxious  about 
her  own  marital  chances.  The  first  preoccupation  with 
sex  experimentation  has  worn  itself  out  and  she  settles 
down  to  increase  her  value  as  a  wife.  In  native  theory 
a  girl  knows  how  to  sew  thatch,  but  doesn't  really  make 
thatch  until  she  is  married.    In  actual  practice  the  adult 

[185] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

i  I  unmarried  girls  perform  household  and  agricultural 
'/tasks  identical  with  those  performed  by  their  married 
'  sisters,  except  that  whereas  pregnancy  and  nursing  chil- 
dren tie  the  young  married  women  to  the  house,  the 
unmarried  girls  are  free  to  go  off  on  long  fish- 
ing expeditions,  or  far  inland  in  search  of  weaving 
materials. 

A  married  couple  may  live  either  in  the  household  of 
the  girl  or  of  the  boy,  choice  being  made  on  the  basis 
of  rank,  or  the  industrial  needs  of  the  two  households. 
The  change  of  residence  makes  much  less  difference  to 
the  girl  than  to  the  boy.  A  married  woman's  life  is 
lived  in  such  a  narrow  sphere  that  her  only  associates 
are  the  women  of  her  household.  Residence  in  her 
husband's  village  instead  of  her  own  does  not  narrow 
her  life,  for  her  participation  in  village  affairs  will 
remain  slight  and  unimportant  until  her  husband 
assumes  a  title  which  confers  status  upon  her  also.  If 
her  husband's  household  is  in  her  own  village,  her 
responsibilities  will  be  increased  somewhat  because  she 
will  be  subject  to  continual  demands  from  her  own 
near  relatives  as  well  as  from  those  of  her  husband. 

There  is  no  expectation  of  conflict  between  daughter- 
in-law  and  mother-in-law.  The  mother-in-law  must 
be  respected  because  she  is  an  elder  of  the  household 
and  an  insolent  daughter-in-law  is  no  more  tolerated 
than  an  insubordinate  daughter  or  niece.  But  tales  of 
the  traditional  lack  of  harmony  which  exists  in  our 
civilisation  were  treated  by  the   Samoans   with  con- 

[i86] 


MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE 

temptuous  amusement.  Where  the  emotional  ties  be- 
tween parents  and  children  are  so  weak,  it  was  impos- 
sible to  make  them  see  it  as  an  issue  between  a  man's 
mother  and  man's  wife,  in  which  jealousy  played  a 
part.  They  saw  it  simply  as  failure  on  the  part  of  the 
young  and  unimportant  person  to  pay  proper  respect 
to  the  old,  granting  of  course  that  there  were  always 
irascible  old  people  from  whom  it  was  expedient  to 
move  away.  The  same  thing  holds  true  for  the  young 
man,  if  he  goes  to  live  in  his  father-in-law's  house.  If 
the  father-in-law  is  the  mataiy  he  has  complete  authority 
over  his  daughter's  husband}  if  he  is  only  an  untitled 
old  man,  he  must  still  be  treated  with  respect. 

But  change  of  village  for  the  young  man  makes  a 
great  difference,  because  he  must  take  his  place  in  a 
new  Aumaga,  and  work  with  strangers  instead  of  with 
the"^ys  with  whom  he  has  worked  and  played  since 
childhood.  Very  often  he  never  becomes  as  thoroughly 
assimilated  to  the  new  group  as  he  was  to  the  old.  He 
stands  more  upon  his  dignity.  He  works  with  his  new 
companions  but  does  not  play  with  them.  The  social 
life  of  the  Aumaga  centres  about  the  group  courtesies 
which  they  pay  to  visiting  girls.  In  his  own  village 
a  man  will  accompany  the  younger  boys  on  these  occa- 
sions for  many  years  after  he  is  married.  But  in  his 
wife's  village,  such  behaviour  becomes  suddenly  less 
appropriate.  Random  amatory  adventures  are  also 
more  hazardous  when  he  is  living  as  a  member  of  his 
wife's  household.     And  although  his  transition  from 

[187] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

the  status  of  a  young  man  to  the  status  of  a  matai  is 
easier,  he  ages  more  quickly  j  although  he  may  earn 
great  respect  in  his  adopted  village,  he  commands 
less  of  its  affection. 

■In  most  marriages  there  is  no  sense  of  setting  up  a 
new  and  separate  establishment.  The  change  is  felt  in 
the  change  of  residence  for  either  husband  or  wife  and 
in  the  reciprocal  relations  which  spring  up  between  the 
two  families.  But  the  young  couple  live  in  the  main 
household,  simply  receiving  a  bamboo  pillow,  a  mos- 
quito net  and  a  pile  of  mats  for  their  bed.  Only  for 
(Ithe  chief  or  the  chief's  son  is  a  new  house  built.  The 
(wife  works  with  all  the  women  of  the  household  and 
waits  upon  all  the  men.  The  husband  shares  the  enter- 
prises of  the  other  men  and  boys.  Neither  in  personal 
service  given  or  received  are  the  two  marked  off  as  a 
unit.  Nor  does  marriage  of  either  brother  or  sister 
slacken  the  avoidance  rules  j  it  merely  adds  another 
individual,  the  new  sister  or  brother-in-law,  to  whom 
the  whole  series  of  avoidances  must  be  applied.  In  the 
sexual  relation  alone  are  the  two  treated  as  one.  For 
even  in  the  care  of  the  young  children  and  in  the  de- 
cisions as  to  their  future,  the  uncles  and  aunts  and 
grandparents  participate  as  fully  as  the  parents.  It  is 
only  when  a  man  is  matai  as  well  as  father,  that  he  has 
control  over  his  own  children  j  and  when  this  is  so,  the 
relationship  is  blurred  in  opposite  fashion,  for  he  has 
the  same  control  over  many  other  young  people  who 
are  less  closely  related  to  him. 

[i88] 


MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE 

The  pregnant  young  wife  is  surrounded  by  a  multi- 
tude of  taboos,  most  of  which  are  prohibitions  against 
solitary  activities.  She  must  not  walk  alone,  sit  alone, 
dance  alone,  gather  food  alone,  eat  alone,  or  when 
only  her  husband  is  present.  All  of  these  taboos  are 
explained  by  the  amiable  doctrine  that  only  things 
which  are  wrong  are  done  in  solitude  and  that  any 
wrong  deed  committed  by  the  expectant  mother  will  -v 
injure  the  child.  It  seems  simpler  to  prohibit  solitary 
acts  than  wrong  ones.  There  are  also  ghosts  which  are,,^- 
particularly  likely  to  injure  the  pregnant  woman,  and 
she  is  warned  against  walking  in  ghost-ridden  places. 
She  is  warned  against  doing  too  heavy  work  and  against 
getting  chilled  or  overheated.  While  pregnancy  is  not 
treated  with  anything  like  the  consideration  which  is 
often  given  it  here,  her  first  pregnancy  gives  a  womaft  j^ 
a  certain  amount  of  social  prominence.  This  promi- 
nence is  in  direct  proportion  to  her  rank,  and  the  young 
wife  whose  child  is  the  presumptive  heir  to  some  high 
title  is  watched  over  with  great  solicitude.  Relatives 
gather  from  great  distances  for  the  confinement  and 
birth  feast,  which  is  described  as  the  mother's  feast, 
rather  than  the  feast  in  honour  of  either  child  or  father. 

After  the  birth  of  the  first  child,  the  other  children 
arrive  frequently  and  with  small  remark.  Old  gossips 
count  them  and  comment  on  the  number  living,  dead  or 
miscarried  in  previous  births.  A  pig  is  roasted  for  the 
birth  feast  to  which  only  the  near  relatives  are  invited. 
The   mother   of  many  children   is   rather   taken   for 

[189] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

granted  than  praised.  The  barren  woman  is  mildly 
^  execrated  and  her  misfortune  attributed  to  loose  living. 
There  were  three  barren  older  women  on  Tauj  all 
three  were  midwives  and  reputed  to  be  very  wise.  Now 
well  past  the  child-bearing  age,  they  were  reaping  the 
reward  of  the  greater  application  to  the  intricacies  of 
their  calling  with  which  they  had  compensated  for  their 
barrenness. 

The  young  married  women  of  twenty  to  thirty  are  a 
busy,  cheerful  group.  They  become  church  members 
and  wear  hats  to  church.  When  they  have  not  a  baby 
at  the  breast,  they  are  doing  heavy  work  on  the  planta- 
tions, fishing  or  making  tapa.  No  other  important 
event  will  ever  happen  to  them  again.  If  their  hus- 
bands die,  they  will  probably  take  new  husbands,  and 
those  of  lower  rank.  If  their  husbands  become  mataisj 
they  will  also  acquire  a  place  in  the  fono  of  the  women. 
But  it  is  only  the  woman  with  a  flair  for  political  wire- 
,  pulling  and  the  luck  to  have  either  important  relatives 
or  an  important  husband  who  gets  any  real  satisfaction 
out  of  the  social  organisation  of  the  village. 

The  young  men  do  not  settle  as  early  into  a  groove. 
What  her  first  child  is  to  a  woman  his  title  is  to  a  man, 
and  while  each  new  child  is  less  of  an  event  in  her  life, 
a  new  title  is  always  a  higher  one  and  a  greater  event 
in  his.    A  man  rarely  attains  his  first  title  before  he  is 

S  thirty,  often  not  before  he  is  forty.    All  the  years  be- 
tween his  entrance  into  the  Aumaga  and  his  entrance 
'  into  the  Fono  are  years  of  striving.    He  cannot  acquire 

[190] 


^  s 


MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE 

a  reputation  and  then  rest  upon  it  or  another  claimant 
to  the  same  title  will  take  advantage  of  his  indolence 
and  pass  him  in  the  race.  One  good  catch  of  fish  does 
not  make  him  a  fisherman  nor  one  housebeam  neatly 
adzed,  a  carpenter  j  the  whole  emphasis  is  upon  a  steady 
demonstration  of  increasing  skill  which  will  be  earnest 
of  the  necessary  superiority  over  his  fellows.  Only  the 
lazy,  the  shiftless,  the  ambitionless  fail  to  respond  to 
this  competition.  The  one  exception  to  this  is  in  the 
case  of  the  son  or  heir  of  the  high  chief  who  may  be 
made  the  manaia  at  twenty.  But  here  his  high  rank 
has  already  subjected  him  to  more  rigorous  discipline 
and  careful  training  than  the  other  youths,  and  as 
manaia y  he  is  the  titular  head  of  the  Aumaga,  and  must 
lead  it  well  or  lose  his  prestige. 

Once  having  acquired  a  matai  name  and  entered  the 
FonOy  differences  in  temperament  prevail.  The  matai 
name  he  receives  may  be  a  very  small  one,  carrying  with 
it  no  right  to  a  post  in  the  council  house,  or  other  pre- 
rogatives. It  may  be  so  small  that  matai  though  he  is, 
he  does  not  try  to  command  a  household,  but  lives  in- 
stead in  the  shadow  of  some  more  important  relative. 
But  he  will  be  a  member  of  the  FonOy  classed  with  the 
elders  of  the  village,  and  removed  forever  from  the 
hearty  group  activities  of  the  young  men.  Should  he 
become  a  widower  and  wish  to  court  a  new  wife,  he  can 
only  do  so  by  laying  aside  his  m^atai  name  and  enter- 
ing her  house  under  the  fiction  that  he  is  still  a  youth. 
His  main  preoccupation  is  the  affairs  of  the  village  j  his 

[191] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

main  diversion,  hours  spent  in  ceremonious  argument 
in  some  meeting.     He  always  carries  his  bundle  of 
.  beaten  cocoanut  fibre  and  as  he  talks,  he  rolls  the  fibres 
/     together  on  his  bare  thigh. 

The  less  ambitious  rest  upon  this  achievement.    The 
more  ambitious  continue  the  game,  for  higher  titles,  for 
,  I  greater  prestige  as  craftsmen  or  orators,  for  the  control 

^v^MiL^of  more  strings  in  the  political  game.  At  last  the 
preference  for  the  most  able,  the  very  preference  which, 
in  defiance  of  laws  of  primogeniture  or  direct  descent, 
may  have  given  a  man  his  title,  takes  it  away  from  him. 
For  should  he  live  beyond  his  prime,  fifty-five  or  sixty, 
his  name  is  taken  from  him  and  given  to  another,  and 
he  is  given  a  "little  matal  name,"  so  that  he  may  still  sit 
with  the  other  matais  and  drink  his  kava.  These  old 
men  stay  at  home,  guard  the  house  while  the  others 
go  inland  to  the  plantations,  superintend  the  children, 
braid  cinet  and  give  advice,  or  in  a  final  perverse  asser- 
tion of  authority,  fail  to  give  it.  One  young  chief  who 
had  been  given  his  father's  name  during  his  father's 
lifetime,  complained  to  me:  "I  had  no  old  man  to  help 
me.  My  father  was  angry  that  his  title  was  given  to  me 
and  he  would  tell  me  nothing.  My  mother  was  wise 
but  she  came  from  another  island  and  did  not  know  well 
the  ancient  ways  of  our  village.  There  was  no  old  one 
in  the  house  to  sit  with  me  in  the  evening  and  fill  my 
ears  with  the  things  from  the  olden  time.  A  young 
matai  should  always  have  an  old  man  beside  him,  who, 

[192] 


MATURITY  AND  OLD  AGE 

even  though  he  is  deaf  and  cannot  always  hear  his 
questions,  can  still  tell  him  many  things." 

The  women's  lives  pursue  a  more  even  tenor.    The 
wives  of  chiefs  and  talking  chiefs  have  to  give  some 
time  to  the  mastery  of  ceremonial.     The  old  women 
who  become  midwives  or  doctors  pursue  their  profes-  1 
sions  but  seldom  and  in  a  furtive,  private  fashion.    The  I 
menopause  is  marked  by  some  slight  temperamental  in- 
stability, irritability,  finickiness  about  food,  a  tendency 
to  sudden  whims  and  inexplicable  fancies.     Once  past 
the  menopause  and  relieved  of  child-bearing,  a  woman 
turns  her  attention  again  to  the  heavy  work  of  the 
plantations.    The  hardest  work  of  the  village  is  done 
by  women  between  forty-five  and  fifty-five.    Then,  as  i  j 
age  approaches,  she  settles  down  to  performing  the 
skilled  tasks  in  the  household,  to  weaving  and  tapa 
making. 

Where  a  man  is  disqualified  from  active  work  by 
rheumatism,  elephantiasis,  or  general  feebleness,  his 
role  as  a  teacher  is  diminished.  He  can  teach  the 
aspirant  young  fisherman  the  lore  of  fishing  but  not  the 
technique.  The  old  woman  on  the  other  hand  is  mis- 
tress of  housebound  crafts  and  to  her  must  go  the  girl 
who  is  ambitious  to  become  a  skilled  weaver.  Another 
can  gather  the  herbs  which  she  needs  for  her  medicines, 
while  she  keeps  the  secret  of  compounding  them.  The 
ceremonial  burning  of  the  candle-nut  to  obtain  black 
dye  is  in  the  hands  of  very  old  women.    And  also  these 

[193] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

old  women  are  usually  more  of  a  power  within  the 
household  than  the  old  men.  The  men  rule  partly  by 
the  authority  conferred  by  their  titles,  but  their  wives 
and  sisters  rule  by  force  of  personality  and  knowledge 
of  human  nature.  A  life-long  preoccupation  within  the 
smaller  group  makes  them  omniscient  and  tyrannical. 
They  suffer  no  diminution  of  prestige  except  such  as  is 
inherent  in  the  complete  loss  of  their  faculties. 

The  feeling  for  generation  is  retained  until  death, 
and  the  very  old  people  sit  in  the  sun  and  talk  softly 
without  regard  for  taboo  or  sex. 


[194] 


XIII 

OUR    EDUCATIONAL    PROBLEMS    IN    THE    LIGHT 
OF    SAMOAN    CONTRASTS 

FOR  many  chapters  we  have  followed  the  lives  of 
Samoan  girls,  watched  them  change  from  babies  to 
baby-tenders,  learn  to  make  the  oven  and  weave  fine 
mats,  forsake  the  life  of  the  gang  to  become  more 
active  members  of  the  household,  defer  marriage 
through  as  many  years  of  casual  love-making  as  pos- 
sible, finally  marry  and  settle  down  to  rearing  children 
who  will  repeat  the  same  cycle.  As  far  as  our  material 
permitted,  an  experiment  has  been  conducted  to  discover 
what  the  process  of  development  was  like  in  a  society 
very  different  from  our  own.  Because  the  length  of 
human  life  and  the  complexity  of  our  society  did  not 
permit  us  to  make  our  experiment  here,  to  choose  a 
group  of  baby  girls  and  bring  them  to  maturity  under 
conditions  created  for  the  experiment,  it  was  necessary 
to  go  instead  to  another  country  where  history  had  set 
the  stage  for  us.  There  we  found  girl  children  pass- 
ing through  the  same  process  of  physical  development 
through  which  our  girls  go,  cutting  their  first  teeth  and 
losing  them,  cutting  their  second  teeth,  growing  tall  and 
ungainly,  reaching  puberty  with  their  first  menstruation, 
gradually  reaching  physical   maturity,  and  becoming 

[195] 


V 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ready  to  produce  the  next  generation.  It  was  possible 
to  say:  Here  are  the  proper  conditions  for  an  experi- 
ment j  the  developing  girl  is  a  constant  factor  in 
America  and  in  Samoa  j  the  civilisation  of  America  and 
the  civilisation  of  Samoa  are  different.  In  the  course 
of  development,  the  process  of  growth  by  which  the  girl 
baby  becomes  a  grown  woman,  are  the  sudden  and  con- 
spicuous bodily  changes  which  take  place  at  puberty 
accompanied  by  a  development  which  is  spasmodic, 
emotionally  charged,  and  accompanied  by  an  awakened 
religious  sense,  a  flowering  of  idealism,  a  great  desire 
for  assertion  of  self  against  authority — or  not?  Is 
adolescence  a  period  of  mental  and  emotional  distress 
for  the  growing  girl  as  inevitably  as  teething  is  a  period 
of  misery  for  the  small  baby?  Can  we  think  of  ado- 
lescence as  a  time  in  the  life  history  of  every  girl  child 
which  carries  with  it  symptoms  of  conflict  and  stress  as 
surely  as  it  implies  a  change  in  the  girl's  body? 

Following  the  Samoan  girls  through  every  aspect  of 
their  lives  we  have  tried  to  answer  this  question,  and 
we  found  throughout  that  we  had  to  answer  it  in  the 
egative.  The  adolescent  girl  in  Samoa  differed  from 
her  sister  who  had  not  reached  puberty  in  one  chief  re- 
spect, that  in  the  older  girl  certain  bodily  changes  were 
present  which  were  absent  in  the  younger  girl.  There 
were  no  other  great  differences  to  set  off  the  group 
passing  through  adolescence  from  the  group  which 
would  become  adolescent  in  two  years  or  the  group 
which  had  become  adolescent  two  years  before. 

■^v  [196] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

And  if  one  girl  past  puberty  is  undersized  while  her 
cousin  is  tall  and  able  to  do  heavier  work,  there  will  be 
a  difference  between  them,  due  to  their  different  physi- 
cal endowment,  which  will  be  far  greater  than  that 
which  is  due  to  puberty.  The  tall,  husky  girl  will  be 
isolated  from  her  companions,  forced  to  do  longer, 
more  adult  tasks,  rendered  shy  by  a  change  of  clothing, 
while  her  cousin,  slower  to  attain  her  growth,  will  still 
be  treated  as  a  child  and  will  have  to  solve  only  the 
slightly  fewer  problems  of  childhood.  The  precedent 
of  educators  here  who  recommend  special  tactics  in  the 
treatment  of  adolescent  girls  translated  into  Samoan 
terms  would  read:  Tall  girls  are  different  from  short 
girls  of  the  same  age,  we  must  adopt  a  different  method 
of  educating  them. 

But  when  we  have  answered  the  question  we  set  out 
to  answer  we  have  not  finished  with  the  problem.  A 
further  question  presents  itself.  If  it  is  proved  that 
adolescence  is  not  necessarily  a  specially  difficult  period 
in  a  girl's  life — and  proved  it  is  if  we  can  find  any  yv  \ 
society  in  which  that  is  so — then  what  accpunts  for  the  ;  \ 

presence  of  storm  and  stress  in  American  adolescents?  j 
First,  we  may  say  quite  simply,  that  there  must  be  some-    , 
thing    in    the    two    civilisations    to    account    for    the    ' 
difference.     If  the  same  process  takes  a  different  form  , 
in  two  different  environments,  we  cannot  make  any  ex-  j 

planations  in  terms  of  the  process,  for  that  is  the  same  | 

in  both   cases.      But   the   social   environment   is   very  j    o,..  I 
different  and  it  is  to  it  that  we  must  look  for  an  explana-  i 

[197] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

tion.  What  is  there  in  Samoa  which  is  absent  in 
America,  what  is  there  in  America  which  is  absent  in 
Samoa,  which  will  account  for  this  diflFerence? 

Such  a  question  has  enormous  implications  and  any 
attempt  to  answer  it  will  be  subject  to  many  possibilities 
of  error.  But  if  we  narrow  our  question  to  the  way  in 
which  aspects  of  Samoan  life  which  irremediably  affect 
the  life  of  the  adolescent  girl  differ  from  the  forces 
which  influence  our  growing~girls,  it  is  possible  to  try 
to  answer  it. 

—  The  background  of  these  differences  is  a  broad  one, 
with  two  important  components j  one  is  due. to  charac- 
teristics which  are  Samoan,  the  other  to  characteristics 
which  are  primitive. 

The  Samoan  background  which  makes  growing  up  so 
easy,  so  simple  a  matter,  is  the  general  casualness  of  the 
whole  society.  For  Samoa  is  a  place  where  no^neplaVs 
for  very  high  stakes,  no  one  pays  very  heavy  prices,  no 
one  suffers  for  his  convictions  or  fights  to  the  death  for 
special  ends.  Disagreements  between  parent  and  child 
are  settled  by  the  child's  moving  across  the  street,  be- 
tween a  man  and  his  village  by  the  man's  removal  to  the 
next  village,  between  a  husband  and  his  wife's  seducer 
by  a  few  fine  mats.  Neither  poverty  nor  great  disasters 
threaten  the  people  to  make  them  hold  their  lives  dearly 
and  tremble  for  continued  existence.  No  implacable 
gods,  swift  to  anger  and  strong  to  punish,  disturb  the 
even  tenor  of  their  days.  Wars  and  cannibalism  are 
long  since  passed  away  and  now  the  greatest  cause  for 

[198] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

tears,  short  of  death  itself,  Is  a  journey  of  a  relative  to    ^ 
another  island.     No  one  is  hurried  along  in  life  or    | 
punished  harshly  for  slowness  of  development.     In- 
stead the  gifted,  the  precocious,  are  held  back,  until  the 
slowest  among  them  have  caught  the  pace.     And  in    , 
personal  relations,  caring  is  as  slight.     Love  and  hate, 
jealousy  and  revenge,  sorrow  and  bereavement,  are  all      i 
matters  of  weeks.     From  the  first  months  of  its  life,     / 
when  the  child  is  handed  carelessly  from  one  woman's     ! 
hands  to  another's,  the  lesson  is  learned  of  not  caring 
for  one  person  greatly,  not  setting  high  hopes  on  any     ' 
one  relationship. 

And  just  as  we  may  feel  that  the  Occident  penalises 
those  unfortunates  who  are  born  into  Western  civilisa- 
tion with  a  taste  for  meditation  and  a  complete  distaste 
for  activity,  so  we  may  say  that  Samoa  is  kind  to  those 
who  have  learned  the  lesson  of  not  caring,  and  hard 
upon  those  few  individuals  who  have  failed  to  learn  It. 
Lola  and  Mala  and  little  Siva,  Lola's  sister,  all  were 
girls  with  a  capacity  for  emotion  greater  than  their' 
fellows.  And  Lola  and  Mala,  passionately  desiring  [ 
affection  and  too  violently  venting  upon  the  community 
their  disappointment  over  their  lack  of  It,  were  both 
delinquent,  unhappy  misfits  in  a  society  which  gave  all 
the  rewards  to  those  who  took  defeat  lightly  and  turned 
to  some  other  goal  with  a  smile. 

In  this  casual  attitude  towards  life,  in  this  avoid-  j 
ance  of  conflict,  of  poignant  situations,  Samoa  contrasts  ' 
strongly  not  only  with  America  but  also  with  most  prlm- 

[199] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

itive  civilisations.  And  however  much  we  may  deplore 
such  an  attitude  and  feel  that  important  personalities 
and  great  art  are  not  born  in  so  shallow  a  society,  we 
must  recognise  that  here  is  a  strong  factor  in  the  pain- 
less development  from  childhood  to  womanhood.  For 
where  no  one  feels  very  strongly,  the  adolescent  will 
not  be  tortured  by  poignant  situations.  There  are  no 
such  disastrous  choices  as  those  which  confronted  young 
people  who  felt  that  the  service  of  God  demanded  for- 
swearing the  world  forever,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  or 
cutting  off  one's  finger  as  a  religious  offering,  as  among 
the  Plains  Indians.  So,  high  up  in  our  list  of  explana- 
tions we  must  place  the  lack  of  deep  feeling  which  the 
Samoans  have  conventionalised  until  it  is  the  very 
framework  of  all  their  attitudes  toward  life. 

And  next  there  is  the  most  striking  way  in  which  all 
/  'isolated  primitive  civilisation  and  many  modern  ones 
differ  from  our  own,  in  the  number  of  choices  which 
are  permitted  to  each  individual.  Our  children  grow 
up  to  find  a  world  of  choices  dazzling  their  unaccus- 
tomed eyes.  In  religion  they  may  be  Catholics, 
Protestants,  Christian  Scientists,  Spiritualists,  Agnostics, 
Atheists,  or  even  pay  no  attention  at  all  to  religion. 
This  is  an  unthinkable  situation  in  any  primitive  society 
not  exposed  to  foreign  influence.  There  is  one  set  of 
gods,  one  accepted  religious  practice,  and  if  a  man  does 
not  believe,  his  only  recourse  is  to  believe  less  than  his 
fellows  j  he  may  scofF  but  there  is  no  new  faith  to  which 
he  may  turn.     Present-day  Manu'a  approximates  this 

[200] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

condition  J  all  are  Christians  of  the  same  sect.  There  is 
no  conflict  in  matters  of  belief  although  there  is  a  dif- 
ference in  practice  between  Church-members  and  non- 
Church-members.  And  it  was  remarked  that  in  the 
case  of  several  of  the  growing  girls  the  need  for  choice  < 
between  these  two  practices  may  some  day  produce  a  / 
conflict.  But  at  present  the  Church  makes  too  slight  a 
bid  for  young  unmarried  members  to  force  the  adoles- 
cent to  make  any  decision. 

Similarly,  our  children  are  faced  with  half  a  dozen 
standards  of  morality:  a  double  sex  standard  for  men 
and  women,  a  single  standard  for  men  and  women,  and 
groups  which  advocate  that  the  single  standard  should 
be  freedom  while  others  argue  that  the  single  standard 
should  be  absolute  monogamy.  Trial  marriage,  com- 
panionate marriage,  contract  marriage — all  these  pos- 
sible solutions  of  a  social  impasse  are  paraded  before  the 
growing  children  while  the  actual  conditions  in  their 
own  communities  and  the  moving  pictures  and  maga- 
zines inform  them  of  mass  violations  of  every  code, 
violations  which  march  under  no  banners  of  social  re- 
form. 

The  Samoan  child  faces  no  such  dilemma.    Sex  is  a  i 
natural,  pleasurable  thing;  the  freedom  with  which  it  j' 
may  be  indulged  in  is  limited  by  just  one  consideration,  [ 
social    status.      Chiefs'    daughters    and   chiefs'    wives 
should  indulge  in  no  extra-marital  experiments.     Re-  1^ 
sponsible  adults,  heads  of  households  and  mothers  of 
families  should  have  too  many  important  matters  on 

[201] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

hand  to  leave  them  much  time  for  casual  amorous  ad- 
ventures. Every  one  in  the  community  agrees  about 
the  matter,  the  only  dissenters  are  the  missionaries  who 
dissent  so  vainly  that  their  protests  are  unimportant. 
But  as  soon  as  a  sufficient  sentiment  gathers  about  the 
missionary  attitude  with  its  European  standard  of  sex 
behaviour,  the  need  for  choice,  the  forerunner  of  con- 
flict, will  enter  into  Samoan  society. 

Our  young  people  are  faced  by  a  series  of  different 
groups  which  believe  different  things  and  advocate 
different  practices,  and  to  each  of  which  some  trusted 
friend  or  relative  may  belong.  So  a  girl's  father  may 
be  a  Presbyterian,  an  imperialist,  a  vegetarian,  a  tee- 
totaler, with  a  strong  literary  preference  for  Edmund 
Burke,  a  believer  in  the  open  shop  and  a  high  tariff,  who 
believes  that  woman's  place  is  in  the  home,  that  young 
girls  should  wear  corsets,  not  roll  their  stockings,  not 
smoke,  nor  go  riding  with  young  men  in  the  evening. 
But  her  mother's  father  may  be  a  Low  Episcopalian,  a 
believer  in  high  living,  a  strong  advocate  of  States' 
Rights  and  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  who  reads  Rabelais, 
likes  to  go  to  musical  shows  and  horse  races.  Her  aunt 
is  an  agnostic,  an  ardent  advocate  of  woman's  rights,  an 
internationalist  who  rests  all  her  hopes  on  Esperanto, 
is  devoted  to  Bernard  Shaw,  and  spends  her  spare  time 
in  campaigns  of  anti-vivisection.  Her  elder  brother, 
whom  she  admires  exceedingly,  has  just  spent  two  years 
at  Oxford.  He  is  an  Anglo-Catholic,  an  enthusiast 
concerning  all  things  mediaeval,  writes  mystical  poetry, 

[202] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

reads  Chesterton,  and  means  to  devote  his  life  to  seek- 
ing for  the  lost  secret  of  mediasval  stained  glass.  Her 
mother's  younger  brother  is  an  engineer,  a  strict  materi- 
alist, who  never  recovered  from  reading  Haeckel  in  his 
youth  J  he  scorns  art,  believes  that  science  will  save  the 
world,  scoffs  at  everything  that  was  said  and  thought 
before  the  nineteenth  century,  and  ruins  his  health  by 
experiments  in  the  scientific  elimination  of  sleep.  Her 
mother  is  of  a  quietistic  frame  of  mind,  very  much 
interested  in  Indian  philosophy,  a  pacifist,  a  strict  non- 
participator  in  life,  who  in  spite  of  her  daughter's  devo- 
tion to  her  will  not  make  any  move  to  enlist  her 
enthusiasms.  And  this  may  be  within  the  girl's  own 
household.  Add  to  it  the  groups  represented,  de- 
fended, advocated  by  her  friends,  her  teachers,  and  the 
books  which  she  reads  by  accident,  and  the  list  of 
possible  enthusiasms,  of  suggested  allegiances,  incom- 
patible with  one  another,  becomes  appalling. 

The  Samoan  girl's  choices  are  far  otherwise.  Her 
father  is  a  member  of  the  Church  and  so  is  her  uncle. 
Her  father  lives  in  a  village  where  there  is  good  fishing, 
her  uncle  in  a  village  where  there  are  plenty  of  cocoanut 
crabs.  Her  father  Is  a  good  fisherman  and  in  his  house 
there  is  plenty  to  eatj  her  uncle  is  a  talking  chief  and 
his  frequent  presents  of  bark  cloth  provide  excellent 
dance  dresses.  Her  paternal  grandmother,  who  lives 
with  her  uncle,  can  teach  her  many  secrets  of  healing; 
her  maternal  grandmother,  who  lives  with  her  mother, 
is  an  expert  weaver  of  fans.     The  boys  in  her  uncle's 

[203] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

village  are  admitted  younger  into  the  Aumaga  and  are 
not  much  fun  when  they  come  to  callj  but  there  are 
three  boys  in  her  own  village  whom  she  likes  very 
much.    And  her  great  dilemma  is  whether  to  live  with 
"""'i  her  father  or  her  uncle,  a  frank,  straightforward  prob- 
l^  {    lem  which  introduces  no  ethical  perplexities,  no  question 
^  of  impersonal  logic.    Nor  will  her  choice  be  taken  as  a 

personal  matter,  as  the  American  girPs  allegiance  to  the 
views  of  one  relative  might  be  interpreted  by  her  other 
relatives.  The  Samoans  will  be  sure  she  chose  one 
residence  rather  than  the  other  for  perfectly  good 
reasons,  the  food  was  better,  she  had  a  lover  in  one 
village,  or  she  had  quarrelled  with  a  lover  in  the  other 
village.  In  each  case  she  was  making  concrete  choices 
within  one  recognised  pattern  of  behaviour.  She  was 
never  called  upon  to  make  choices  involving  an  actual 
rejection  of  the  standards  of  her  social  group,  such  as 
the  daughter  of  Puritan  parents,  who  permits  indis- 
criminate caresses,  must  make  in  our  society. 

7^  And  not  only  are  our  developing  children  faced  by  a 

series  of  groups  advocating  different  and  mutually  ex- 
clusive standards,  but  a  more  perplexing  problem 
presents  itself  to  them.  Because  our  civilisation  is 
woven  of  so  many  diverse  strands,  the  ideas  which  any 
one  group  accepts  will  be  found  to  contain  numerous 
contradictions.  So  if  the  girl  has  given  her  allegiance 
whole-heartedly  to  some  one  group  and  has  accepted  in 
good  faith  their  asseverations  that  they  alone  are  right 
and  all  other  philosophies  of  life  are  Antichrist  and 
'^*  [204] 


I         OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

■4, 
anathema,  her  troubles  are  still  not  over.    While  the 

less  thoughtful  receives  her  worst  blows  in  the  discovery 
that  what  father  thinks  is  good,  grandfather  thinks  is 
bad,  and  that  things  which  are  permitted  at  home  are 
banned  at  school,  the  more  thoughtful  child  has  subtler 
difficulties  in  store  for  her.  If  she  has  philosophically 
accepted  the  fact  that  there  are  several  standards  among 
which  she  must  choose,  she  may  still  preserve  a  child- 
like faith  in  the  coherence  of  her  chosen  philosophy. 
Beyond  the  immediate  choice  which  was  so  puzzling 
and  hard  to  make,  which  perhaps  involved  hurting  her 
parents  or  alienating  her  friends,  she  expects  peace. 
But  she  has  not  reckoned  with  the  fact  that  each  of  the 
philosophies  with  which  she  is  confronted  is  itself  but 
the  half-ripened  fruit  of  compromise.  If  she  accept 
Christianity,  she  is  immediately  confused  between  the 
Gospel  teachings  concerning  peace  and  the  value  of 
human  life  and  the  Church's  whole-hearted  acceptance 
of  war.  The  compromise  made  seventeen  centuries  ago 
between  the  Roman  philosophy  of  war  and  domination, 
and  the  early  Church  doctrine  of  peace  and  humility,  is 
still  present  to  confuse  the  modern  child.  If  she  ac- 
cepts the  philosophic  premises  upon  which  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  of  the  United  States  was 
founded,  she  finds  herself  faced  with  the  necessity  of 
reconciling  the  belief  in  the  equality  of  man  and  our 
institutional  pledges  of  equality  of  opportunity  with 
our  treatment  of  the  Negro  and  the  Oriental.  The 
diversity  of  standards  in  present-day  society  is  so  strik- 

[205] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ing  that  the  dullest,  the  most  incurious,  cannot  fail  to 
notice  it.  And  this  diversity  is  so  old,  so  embodied  in 
semi-solutions,  in  those  compromises  between  different 
philosophies  which  we  call  Christianity,  or  democracy, 
or  humanitarianism,  that  it  baffles  the  most  intelligent, 
the  most  curious,  the  most  analytical. 

rSo  for  the  explanation  of  the  lack  of  poignancy  in  the 
choices  of  growing  girls  in  Samoa,  we  must  look  to  the 
temperament  of  the  Samoan  civilisation  whkh  discounts 
strong  feeling.  But  for  the  explanation  of  the  lack 
of  conflict  we  must  look  principally  to  the  difference 
between  a  simple,  homogenous  primitive  ciyUisatioii,  a 
civilisation  which  changes  so  slowly  that  to  each  genera- 
tion it  appears  static,  and  a  motley,  diverse,  hetero- 
^  ^eneous  modern  civilisation. 

And  in  making  the  comparison  there  is  a  third  con- 
sideration, the  lack  of  neuroses  among  the  Samoans,  the 
great  number  of  neuroses  among  ourselves.  We  must 
examine  the  factors  in  the  early  education  of  the  Samoan 
children  which  have  fitted  them  for  a  normal,  un- 
neurotic  development.  The  findings  of  the  behav- 
iourists and  of  the  psychoanalysts  alike  lay  great  em- 
phasis upon  the  enormous  r51e  which  is  played  by  the 
environment  of  the  first  few  years.  Children  who  have 
been  given  a  bad  start  are  often  found  to  function  badly 
later  on  when  they  are  faced  with  important  choices. 
And  we  know  that  the  more  severe  the  choice,  the  more 
conflict  j  the  more  poignancy  is  attached  to  the  demands 
made  upon  the  individual,  the  more  neuroses  will  re- 

[206] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

suit.  History,  in  the  form  of  the  last  war,  provided  a 
stupendous  illustration  of  the  great  number  of  maimed 
and  handicapped  individuals  whose  defects  showed  only 
under  very  special  and  terrible  stress.  Without  the  war, 
there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  many  of  these  shell- 
shocked  individuals  might  not  have  gone  through  life 
unremarked  3  the  bad  start,  the  fears,  the  complexes,  the 
bad  conditionings  of  early  childhood,  would  never  have 
borne  positive  enough  fruit  to  attract  the  attention  of 
society. 

The  implications  of  this  observatioii  are  double. 
Samoa's  lack  of  difficult  situations,  of  conflicting  choice, 
of  situations  in  which  fear  or  pain  or  anxiety  are  sharp- 
ened to  a  knife  edge  will  probably  account  for  a  large 
part  of  the  absence  of  psychological  maladjustment. 
Just  as  a  low-grade  moron  would  not  be  hopelessly 
handicapped  in  Samoa,  although  he  would  be  a  public 
charge  in  a  large  American  city,  so  individuals  with 
slight  nervous  instability  have  a  much  more  favourable 
chance  in  Samoa  than  in  America.  Furthermore  the 
amount  of  individualisation,  the  range  of  variation,  is 
much  smaller  in  Samoa.  Within  our  wider  limits  of 
deviation  there  are  inevitably  found  weak  and  non- 
resistant  temperaments.  And  just  as  our  society  shows 
a  greater  development  of  personality,  so  also  it  shows  a 
larger  proportion  of  individuals  who  have  succumbed 
before  the  complicated  exactions  of  modern  life. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  possible  that  there  are  factors  in 
the  early  environment  of  the  Samoan  child  which  are 

[207] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMO  \ 

particularly  favourable  to  the  establishment  of  nervous 
stability.  Just  as  a  child  from  a  better  home  environ- 
ment in  our  civilisation  may  be  presumed  to  have  a 
better  chance  under  all  circumstances  it  is  conceivable 
that  the  Samoan  child  is  not  only  handled  more  gently 
by  its  culture  but  that  it  is  also  better  equipped  for  those 
difficulties  which  it  does  meet. 

Such  an  assumption  is  given  force  by  the  fact  that 
little  Samoan  children  pass  apparently  unharmed 
through  experiences  which  often  have  grave  effects  on 
individual  development  in  our  civilisation.  Our  life 
histories  ire  filled  with  the  later  difficulties  which  can 
be  traced  back  to  some  early,  highly  charged  experience 
with  sex  or  with  birth  or  death.  And  yet  Samoan  chil- 
dren are  familiarised  at  an  early  age  and  without  disas- 
ter, with  all  three.  It  is  very  possible  that  there  are 
aspects  of  the  life  of  the  young  child  in  Samoa  which 
equip  it  particularly  well  for  passing  through  life  with- 
out nervous  instability. 

With  this  hypothesis  in  mind  it  is  worth  while  to 
Jl  consider  in  more  detail  which  parts  of  the  young  child's 
'  Social  environment  are  most  strikingly  different  from 
ours.  Most  of  these  centre  about  the  family  situation, 
the  environment  which  impinges  earliest  and  most  in-' 
tensely  upon  the  child's  consciousness.  The  organisa- 
tion of  a  Samoan  household  eliminates  at  one  stroke,  in 
almost  all  cases,  many  of  the  special  situations  which 
are  believed  to  be  productive  of  undesirable  emotional 
sets.     The  youngest,  the  oldest,  and  the  only  child, 

[208] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

hardly  ever  occur  because  of  the  large  number  of  chil- 
dren in  a  household,  all  of  whom  receive  the  same 
treatment.  Few  children  are  weighted  down  with  re- 
sponsibility, or  rendered  domineering  and  overbearing 
as  eldest  children  so  often  are,  or  isolated,  condemned 
to  the  society  of  adults  and  robbed  of  the  socialising 
effect  of  contact  with  other  children,  as  only  children 
so  often  are.  No  child  is  petted  and  spoiled  until  its 
view  of  its  own  deserts  is  hopelessly  distorted,  as  is  so 
often  the  fate  of  the  youngest  child.  But  in  the  few 
cases  where  Samoan  family  life  does  approximate  ours, 
the  special  attitudes  incident  to  order  of  birth  and  to 
close  aifectional  ties  with  the  parent  tend  to  develop. 

The   close  relationship  between   parent  and  child,    j 
which  has  such  a  decisive  influence  upon  so  many  in  our 
civilisation,  that  submission  to  the  parent  or  defiance  of  = 
the  parent  may  become  the  dominating  pattern  of  a  life-;; 
time,  is  not  found  in  Samoa.    Children  reared  in  house- 1 
holds  where  there  are  a  half  dozen  adult  women  to  care 
for  them  and  dry  their  tears,  and  a  half  dozen  adult 
males,  all  of  whom  represent  constituted  authority,  do 
not  distinguish  their  parents  as  sharply  as  our  children 
do.    The  image  of  the  fostering,  loving  mother,  or  the  u 
admirable  father,  which  may  serve  to  determine  aff ec-  ' 
tional  choices  later  in  life,  is  a  composite  _affair,  com- 
posed of  several  aunts,  cousins,  older  sisters  and  grand- 
mothers j  of  chief,  father,  uncles,  brothers  and  cousins. 
Instead  of  learning  as  its  first  lesson  that  here  is  a 
kind  mother  whose  special  and  principal  care  is  for  its 

[209] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

welfare,  and  a  father  whose  authority  is  to  be  deferred 
to,  the  Samoan  baby  learns  that  its  world  is  composed 
of  a  hierarchy  of  male  and  female  adults,  all  of  whom 
can  be  depended  upon  and  must  be  deferred  to. 
•*^^'The  lack  of  specialised  feeling  which  results  from 
this  diffusion  of  affection  in  the  household  is  further  re- 
inforced by  the  segregation  of  the  boys  from  the  girls, 
so  that  a  child  regards  the  children  of  the  opposite 
sex  as  taboo  relatives,  regardless  of  individuality,  or  as 
present  enemies  and  future  lovers,  again  regardless  of 
individuality.  And  the  substitution  of  relationship  for 
preference  in  forming  friendships  completes  the  work. 
By  the  time  she  reaches  puberty  the  Samoan  girl  has 
learned  to  subordinate  choice  in  the  selection  of  friends 
or  lovers  to  an  observance  of  certain  categories.  Friends 
must  be  relatives  of  one's  own  sexj  lovers,  non-relatives. 
All  claim  of  personal  attraction  or  congeniality  between 
relatives  of  opposite  sex  must  be  flouted.  All  of  this 
means  that  casual  sex  relations  carry  no  onujjQf_strong_ 
attachment,  that  the  marriage  of  convenience  dictated 
by  economic  and  social  considerations  is  easily  born  and 
casually  broken  without  strong  emotion. 

Nothing  could  present  a  sharper  contrast  to  the 
average  American  home,  with  its  small  number  of  chil- 
dren, the  close,  theoretically  permanent  tie  between  the 
parents,  the  drama  of  the  entrance  of  each  new  child 
upon  the  scene  and  the  deposition  of  the  last  baby. 
Here  the  growing  girl  learns  to  depend  upon  a  few 
individuals,  to  expect  the  rewards  of  life  from  cer- 

[210] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

tain  kinds  of  personalities.  With  this  first  set  towards 
preference  in  personal  relations  she  grows  up  playing 
with  boys  as  well  as  with  girls,  learning  to  know  well 
brothers  and  cousins  and  schoolmates.  She  does  not 
think  of  boys  as  a  class  but  as  individuals,  nice  ones  like 
the  brother  of  whom  she  is  fond,  or  disagreeable,  domi- 
neering ones,  like  a  brother  with  whom  she  is  always  on 
bad  terms.  Preference  in  physical  make-up,  in  tempera- 
ment, in  character,  develops  and  forms  the  foundations 
for  a  very  different  adult  attitude  in  which  choice  plays 
a  vivid  role.  The  Samoan  girl  never  tastes  the  rewards 
of  romantic  love  as  we  know  it,  nor  does  she  suffer  as 
an  oT3  mald^wHoTias  appealed  to  no  lover  or  found  no 
Iov"er  appealing  to  her,  or  as  the  frustrated  wife  in  a 
marriage  which  hasnot  fulfilled  her  high  demands. 

Having  learned  a  little  of  the  art  of  disciplining  sex 
feeling  into  special  channels  approved  by  the  whole 
personality,  we  will  be  inclined  to  account  our  solution 
better  than  the  Samoans.  To  attain  what  we  consider  a 
more  dignified  standard  of  personal  relations  we  are 
willing  to  pay  the  penalty  of  frigidity  in  marriage  and 
a  huge  toll  of  barren,  unmarried  women  who  move  in 
unsatisfied  procession  across  the  American  and  English 
stage.  But  while  granting  the  desirability  of  this  de- 
velopment of  sensitive,  discriminating  response  to  per- 
sonality, as  a  better  basis  for  dignified  human  lives  than 
an  automatic,  undifferentiated  response  to  sex  attraction, 
we  may  still,  in  the  light  of  Samoan  solutions,  count 
our  methods  exceedingly  expensive. 

[211] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

The  strict  segregation  of  related  boys  and  girls,  the 
institutionalised  hostility  between  pre-adolescent  chil- 
dren of  opposite  sexes  in  Samoa  are  cultural  features 
with  which  we  are  completely  out  of  sympathy.  For 
the  vestiges  of  such  attitudes,  expressed  in  our  one-sex 
schools,  we  are  trying  to  substitute  coeducation,  to 
habituate  one  sex  to  another  sufficiently  so  that  dif- 
ference of  sex  will  be  lost  sight  of  in  the  more  im- 
portant and  more  striking  differences  in  personality. 
There  are  no  recognisable  gains  in  the  Samoan  system 
of  taboo  and  segregation,  of  response  to  a  group  rather 
than  response  to  an  individual.  But  when  we  contrast 
the  other  factor  of  difference  the  conclusion  is  not  so 
sure.  What  are  the  rewards  of  the  tiny,  ingrown, 
biological  family  opposing  Its  closed  circle  of  affection 
to  a  forbidding  world,  of  the  strong  ties  between  parents 
and  children,  ties  which  imply  an  active  personal  rela- 
tion from  birth  until  death?  Specialisation  of  affection, 
it  is  true,  but  at  the  price  of  many  individuals'  preserv- 
ing through  life  the  attitudes  of  dependent  children,  of 
ties  between  parents  and  children  which  successfully 
defeat  the  children's  attempts  to  make  other  adjust- 
ments, of  necessary  choices  made  unnecessarily  poignant 
because  they  become  Issues  in  an  intense  emotional  rela- 
tionship. Perhaps  these  are  too  heavy  prices  to  pay 
for  a  ^ecialisation  of  emotion  which  might  be  brought 
about  in  other  ways,  notably  through  coeducation. 
And  with  such  a  question  in  our  minds  it  is  interesting 
to  note  that  a  larger  family  community,  in  which  there 

[212] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

are  several  adult  men  and  women,  seems  to  ensure  the 
child  against  the  development  of  the  crippling  attitudes^   * 
which  have  been  labelled  CEdipus  complexes,  Electra 
complexes,  and  so  on. 

The  Samoan  picture  shows  that  it  is  not  necessary  to 
channel  so  deeply  the  affection  of  a  child  for  its  parents 
and  suggests  that  while  we  would  reject  that  part  of 
the  Samoan  scheme  which  holds  no  rewards  for  us,  the 
segregation  of  the  sexes  before  puberty,  we  may  learn 
from  a  picture  in  which  the  home  does  not  dominate 
and  distort  the  life  of  the  child. 

The  presence  of  many  strongly  held  and  contradic- 
tory points  of  view  and  the  enormous  influence  of  indi- 
viduals in  the  lives  of  their  children  in  our  country  play 
into  each  other's  hands  in  producing  situations  fraught 
with  emotion  and  pain.  \In  Samoa  the  fact  that  one 
girl's  father  is  a  domineering,  dogmatic  person,  her 
cousin's  father  a  gentle,  reasonable  person,  and  another 
cousin's  father  a  vivid,  brilliant,  eccentric  person,  will 
influence  the  three  girls  in  only  one  respect,  choice  of  ^' 
residence  if  any  one  of  the  three  fathers  is  the  head  of  a 
household.  But  the  attitudes  of  the  three  girls  towards 
sex,  and  towards  religion,  will  not  be  affected  by  the 
different  temperaments  of  their  three  fathers,  for  the 
fathers  play  too  slight  a  role  in  their  lives.  A  They  are 
schooled  not  by  an  individual  but  by  an  army  of  rela- 
tives  into  a  general  conformity  upon  which  the  per- 
sonality of  their  parents  has  a  very  slight  effect.  And 
through  an  endless  chain  of  cause  and  effect,  individual 

[213] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

differences  of  standard  are  not  perpetuated  through  the 
children's  adherence  to  the  parents'  position,  nor  are 
children  thrown  into  bizarre,  untypical  attitudes  which 

r might  form  the  basis  for  departure  and  change.  It  is 
,  possible  that  where  our  own  culture  is  so  charged  with 
choke,  it  would  be  desirable  to  mitigate,  at  least  in  some 
slight  measure,  the  strong  role  which  parents  play  in 
children's  lives,  and  so  eliminate  one  of  the  most  pow- 
erful accidental  factors  In  the  choices  of  any  individual 
life. 

/  The  Samoan  parent  would  reject  as  unseemly  and 
odious  an  ethical  plea  made  to  a  child  in  terms  of  per- 
sonal affection.  "Be  good  to  please  mother."  "Go  to 
church  for  father's  sake."  "Don't  be  so  disagreeable  to 
your  sister,  it  makes  father  so  unhappy."  Where  there 
is  one  standard  of  conduct  and  only  one,  such  undig- 
nified confusion  of  ethics  and  affection  is  blessedly 
eliminated.  )But  where  there  are  many  standards  and 
all  adults  are  striving  desperately  to  bind  their  own 
children  to  the  particular  courses  which  they  themselves 
have  chosen,  recourse  is  had  to  devious  and  non-repu- 
table means.  Beliefs,  practices,  courses  of  action,  are 
pressed  upon  the  child  in  the  name  of  filial  loyalty.  In 
our  ideal  picture  of  the  freedom  of  the  individual  and 
the  dignity  of  human  relations  it  is  not  pleasant  to 
realise  that  we  have  developed  a  form  of  family  or- 
ganisation which  often  cripples  the  emotional  life,  and 
warps  and  confuses  the  growth  of  many  individuals' 
power  to  consciously  live  their  own  lives. 

[214] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

The  third  element  in  the  Samoan  pattern  of  lack  of 
personal  relationships  and  lack  of  speci_alised  affection, 
is  the  case  of  friendship.  Here,  most  of  all,  individuals 
are  placed  in  categories  and  the  response  is  to  the  cate- 
gory, "relative,"  or  "wife  of  my  husband's  talking 
chief,"  or  "son  of  my  father's  talking  chief,"  or 
"daughter  of  my  father's  talking  chief."  ^^Considera- 
tion  of  congeniality,  of  like-mindedness,  are  all  ironed 
out  in  favour  of  regimented  associations.^  Such  atti- 
tudes we  would  of  course  reject  completelv.  ^^^ 


fSJLi  ■■ 


Drawing  the  threads  of  this  particular  discussion  to- 
gether, we  may  say  that  one  striking  difference  between 
Samoan  society  and  our  own  is  the  lack  of  the  specialisa-  /h 
tion  of  feeling,  and  particularly  of  sex  feeling^  among  ^ 
Ihe  Samoans.  To  this  difference  is  uncfoubtedly  due 
a  part  of  the  lack  of  difficulty  of  marital  adjustments 
in  a  marriage  of  convenience,  and  the  lack  of  frigidity 
or  psychic  impotence.  This  lack  of  specmlisation_  of 
feeling  must  be  attributed  to  l:he  large_heterog;eneous 
household,  the  segregation  of  the  sexes  before  adoles- 
cence,  and  the  reg^imen^tation  _af  _friendship — chiefly 
along  relationship  lines.  And  yet,  altTiough  we  de- 
plore the  prices.Jn  maladjusted  and  frustrated  lives, 
which  we. must  pay  for  the  greater  specialisation  of  sex 
feeling  in  our  own  society,  we  nevertheless  vote  the 
development  of  specialised  response  as  a  gain  which 
we  would  not  relinquish.  But  an  examination  of  these 
three  causal  factors  suggests  that  we  might  accomplish 
our  desired  end,  the  development  of  a  consciousness  of 

[215] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

personality,  through  coeducation  and  free  and  un- 
regirner^djEriendships,  and  possibly  do  away  with  the 
evils  inherent  in  the  too  intimate  family  organisation, 
thus  eliminating  a  part  of  our  penalty  of  maladjust- 

^jnent  without  sacrificing  any  of  our  dearly  bought  gains. 

,  f^yThe  next  great  difference  between  Samoa  and  our  own 
culture  which  may  be  credited  with  a  lower  production 
of  maladjusted  individuals  is  the  difference  in  the  atti- 
tude towards  sex  and  the  education  of  the  children  In 
matters  pertaining  to  birth  and  death.  None  of  the 
facts  of  sex  or  of  birth  are  regarded  as  unfit  for  children, 
no  child  has  to  conceal  its  knowledge  for  fear  of  punish- 
ment or  ponder  painfully  over  little-understood  occur- 
rences. Secrecy,  ignorance,  guilty  knowledge,  faulty 
speculations  resulting  in  grotesque  conceptions  which 
may  have  far-reaching  results,  a  knowledge  of  the  bare 
physical  facts  of  sex  without  a  knowledge  of  the  accom- 
panying excitement,  of  the  fact  of  birth  without  the  pains 
of  labour,  of  the  fact  of  death  without  the  fact  of  cor- 
ruption— all  the  chief  flaws  in  our  fatal  philosophy  of 
sparing  children  a  knowledge  of  the  dreadful  truth — 
are  absent  In  Samoa.  Furthermore,  the  Samoan  child 
who  participates  intimately  In  the  lives  of  a  host  of 
relatives  has  many  and  varied  experiences  upon  which 

"  to  base  its  emotional  attitudes.  Our  children,  confined 
within  one  family  circle  (and  such  confinement  is  be- 
coming more  and  more  frequent  with  the  growth  of 
cities  and  the  substitution  of  apartment  houses  with  a 
transitory  population  for  a  neighbourhood  of  house- 

[216] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

holders),  often  owe  their  only  experience  with  birth  or 
death  to  the  birth  of  a  younger  brother  or  sister  or  the 
death  of  a  parent  or  grandparent.  Their  knowledge  of 
sex,  aside  from  children's  gossip,  comes  from  an  acci- 
dental glimpse  of  parental  activity.  This  has  several 
very  obvious  disadvantages.  In  the  first  place,  the  child 
is  dependent  for  its  knowledge  upon  birth  and  death 
entering  its  own  home  3  the  youngest  child  in  a  family  1) 

where  there  are  no  deaths  may  grow  to  adult  life  with-       ^  ■ 
out  ever  having  had  any  close  knowledge  of  pregnancy,   '  '' 
experience  with  young  children,  or  contact  with  death.  -K 

A  host  of  ill-digested  fragmentary  conceptions  of  life 
and  death  will  fester  in  the  ignorant,  Inexperienced         ,y 
mind  and  provide  a  fertile  field  for  the  later  growth  ^0 

of  unfortunate  attitudes.  Second,  such  children  draw 
their  experiences  from  too  emotionally  toned  a  field  j 
one  birth  may  be  the  only  one  with  which  they  come  in 
close  contact  for  the  first  twenty  years  of  their  lives. 
And  upon  the  accidental  aspects  of  this  particular  birth 
their  whole  attitude  is  dependent.  If  the  birth  is  that 
of  a  younger  child  who  usurps  the  elder's  place,  if 
the  mother  dies  In  child  bed,  or  if  the  child  which  Is 
born  is  deformed,  birth  may  seem  a  horrible  thing, 
fraught  with  only  unwelcome  consequences.  If  the 
only  death  bed  at  which  one  has  ever  watched  Is  the 
death  bed  of  one's  mother,  the  bare  fact  of  death  may 
carry  all  the  emotion  which  that  bereavement  aroused, 
carry  forever  an  effect  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  par- 
ticular deaths  encountered  later  in  life.     And  inter- 

[217] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

course  seen  only  once  or  twice,  between  relatives  to- 
wards whom  the  child  has  complicated  emotional  atti- 
tudes, may  produce  any  number  of  false  assumptions. 
Our  records  of  maladjusted  children  are  full  of  cases 
where  children  have  misunderstood  the  nature  of  the 
sexual  act,  have  interpreted  it  as  struggle  accompanied 
by  anger,  or  as  chastisement,  have  recoiled  in  terror 
from  one  highly  charged  experience.  So  our  children 
are  dependent  upon  accident  for  their  experience  of 
life  and  death  j  and  those  experiences  which  they  are 
vouchsafed,  lie  within  the  intimate  family  circle  and  so 
are  the  worst  possible  way  of  learning  general  facts 
about  which  it  is  important  to  acquire  no  special,  dis- 
torted attitudes.  One  death,  two  births,  one  sex  ex- 
perience, is  a  generous  total  for  the  child  brought  up 
under  living  conditions  which  we  consider  consonant 
with  an  American  standard  of  living.  And  considering 
the  number  of  illustrations  which  we  consider  it  neces- 
sary to  give  of  how  to  calculate  the  number  of  square 
feet  of  paper  necessary  to  paper  a  room  eight  feet  by 
twelve  feet  by  fourteen  feet,  or  how  to  parse  an  Eng- 
lish sentence,  this  is  a  low  standard  of  illustration.  It 
might  be  argued  that  these  are  experiences  of  such 
high  emotional  tone  that  repetition  is  unnecessary.  It 
might  also  be  argued  if  a  child  were  severely  beaten 
before  being  given  its  first  lesson  in  calculating  how  to 
paper  a  room,  and  as  a  sequel  to  the  lesson,  saw  its 
father  hit  its  mother  with  the  poker,  it  would  always 
remember  that  arithmetic  lesson.     But  what  it  would 

[218] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

know  about  the  real  nature  of  the  calculations  involved 
in  room-papering  is  doubtful.  In  one  or  two  experi- 
ences, the  child  is  given  no  perspective,  no  chance  to 
relegate  the  grotesque  and  unfamiliar  physical  details 
of  the  life  process  to  their  proper  place.  False  impres- 
sions, part  impressions,  repulsion,  nausea,  horror,  grow 
up  about  some  fact  experienced  only  once  under  intense 
emotional  stress  and  in  an  atmosphere  unfavourable  to 
the  child's  attaining  any  real  understanding. 

A  standard  of  reticence  which  forbids  the  child  any 
sort  of  comment  upon  its  experiences  makes  for  the  con- 
tinuance of  such  false  impressions,  such  hampering  emo- 
tional attitudes,  questions  such  as,  "Why  were  grand- 
ma's lips  so  bluer"  are  promptly  hushed.  In  Samoa, 
where  decomposition  sets  in  almost  at  once,  a  frank, 
naive  repugnance  to  the  odours  of  corruption  on  the 
part  of  all  the  participants  at  a  funeral  robs  the  physical 
aspect  of  death  of  any  special  significance.  So,  in  our 
arrangements,  the  child  is  not  allowed  to  repeat  his 
experiences,  and  he  is  not  permitted  to  discuss  those 
which  he  has  had  and  correct  his  mistakes. 

With  the  Samoan  child  it  is  profoundly  different. 
Intercourse,  pregnancy,  child  birth,  death,  are  all 
familiar  occurrences.  And  the  Samoan  child  experi- 
ences them  in  no  such  ordered  fashion  as  we,  were  we 
to  decide  for  widening  the  child's  experimental  field, 
would  regard  as  essential.  In  a  civilisation  which  sus- 
pects privacy,  children  of  neighbours  will  be  accidental 
and  unemotional  spectators  in  a  house  where  the  head 

[219] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

of  the  household  is  dying  or  the  wife  is  delivered  of  a 
miscarriage.  The  pathology  of  the  life  processes  is 
known  to  them,  as  well  as  the  normal.  One  impression 
corrects  an  earlier  one  until  they  are  able,  as  adolescents, 
to  think  about  life  and  death  and  emotion  without  undue 
preoccupation  with  the  purely  physical  details. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  the  mere 
exposure  of  children  to  scenes  of  birth  and  death  would 
be  a  sufficient  guarantee  against  the  growth  of  unde- 
sirable attitudes.  Probably  even  more  influential  than 
the  facts  which  are  so  copiously  presented  to  them,  is 
the  attitude  of  mind  with  which  their  elders  regard  the 
matter.  To  them,  birth  and  sex  and  death  are  the 
natural,  inevitable  structure  of  existence,  of  an  existence 
in  which  they  expect  their  youngest  children  to  share. 
Our  so  often  repeated  comment  that  "it's  not  natural" 
for  children  to  be  permitted  to  encounter  death  would 
seem  as  Incongruous  to  them  as  if  we  were  to  say  it 
was  not  natural  for  children  to  see  other  people  eat  or 
sleep.  'And  this  calm,  matter-of-fact  acceptance  of 
their  children's  presence  envelops  the  children  in  a  pro- 
tective atmosphere,  saves  them  from  shock  and  binds 
them  closer  to  the  common  emotion  which  is  so  digni- 
.  fiedly  permitted  them^) 
\\j  As  in  every  case,  it  is  here  impossible  to  separate 
'  attitude  from  practice  and  say  which  is  primary.  The 
distinction  is  made  only  for  our  use  in  another  civilisa- 
tion. The  individual  American  parents,  who  believe 
in  a  practice  like  the  Samoan,  and  permit  their  children 

[220] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

to  see  adult  human  bodies  and  gain  a  wider  experience 
of  the  functioning  of  the  human  body  than  is  commonly 
permitted  in  our  civilisation,  are  building  upon  sand. 
For  the  child,  as  soon  as  it  leaves  the  protecting  circle     • 
of  its  home,  is  blasted  by  an  attitude  which  regards  such      y 
experience  in  children  as  ugly  and  unnatural.    As  likely  \ 
as  not,  the  attempt  of  the  individual  parents  will  have  ' 
done  the  child  more  harm  than  good,  for  the  necessary 
supporting  social  attitude  is  lacking.     This  is  just  a 
further  example  of  the  possibilities  of  maladjustment 
inherent  in  a  society  where  each  home  differs  from  each 
other  home  J  for  it  is  in  the  fact  of  difference  that  the  « 
strain  lies  rather  than  in  the  nature  of  the  difference. 

Upon  this  quiet  acceptance  of  the  physical  facts  of 
life,  the  Samoans  build,  as  they  grow  older,  an  accept- 
ance of  sex.  Here  again  it  is  necessary  to  sort  out  which 
parts  of  their  practice  seem  to  produce  results  which  we 
certainly  deprecate,  and  which  produce  results  which 
we  desire.  It  is  possible  to  analyse  Samoan  sex  practice 
from  the  standpoint  of  development  of  personal  rela- 
tionships on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  obviation  of 
specific  difficulties  upon  the  other.  f 

We  have  seen  that  the  Samoans  have  a  low  level  of 
appreciation  of  personality  differences,  and  a  poverty 
of  conception  of  personal  relations.  To  such  an  atti-  > 
tude  the  acceptance  of  promiscuity  undoubtedly  con- 
tributes. The  contemporaneousness  of  several  experi- 
ences, their  short  duration,  the  definite  avoidance  of  " 
forming  any  affectional  ties,  the  blithe  acceptance  of  the 

[221] 


A 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

dictates  of  a  favourable  occasion,  as  in  the  expectation  of 
infidelity  in  any  wife  whose  husband  is  long  from  home, 
all  serve  to  make  sex  an  end  rather  than  a  means,  some- 
thing which  is  valued  in  itself,  and  deprecated  inasmuch 
as  it  tends  to  bind  one  individual  to  another.  Whether 
such  a  disregard  of  personal  relations  is  completely  con- 
tingent upon  the  sex  habits  of  the  people  is  doubtful. 
Itf'probably  is  also  a  reflection  of  a  more  general  cul- 
tural attitude  in  which  personality  is  consistently  disre- 
garded. ;  But  there  is  one  respect  in  which  these  very 
practices  make  possible  a  recognition  of  personality 
which  is  often  denied  to  many  in  our  civilisation,  be- 
cause, from  the  Samoans'  complete  knowledge  of  ^sex^ 
its  possibilities  and  its  rewards,  they  are  able  to  count  it 
at  its  true  value.  And  if  they  have  no  preference  for  re- 
serving sex  activity  for  important  relationships,  neither 
do  they  regard  relationships  as  important  because  they 
are  productive  of  sex  satisfaction.  The  Samoan  girl  who 
shrugs  her  shoulder  over  the  excellent  technique  of 
^  some  young  Lothario  is  nearer  to  the  recognition  of 
sex  as  an  impersonal  force  without  any  intrinsic  valid- 
ity, than  is  the  sheltered  American  girl  who  falls  in 
love  with  the  first  man  who  kisses  her.  From  their 
familiarity  with  the  reverberations  which  accompany 
sex  excitement  comes  this  recognition  of  the  essential 
impersonality  of  sex  attraction  which  we  may  well 
envy  themj  from  the  too  slight,  too  casual  practice 
comes  the  disregard  of  personality  which  seems  to  us 
'  unlovely. 

[222] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

The  fashion  in  which  their  sex  practice  reduces  the 
possibility  of  neuroses  has  already  been  discussed.^  By 
discounting  our  category  of  perversion,  as  applied  to 
practice,  and  reserving  it  for  the  occasional  psychic  per- 
vert, they  legislate  a  whole  field  of  neurotic  possibility 
out  of  existence.  Onanism,  homosexuality,  statistically 
unusual  forms  of  heterosexual  activity,  are  neither 
banned  nor  institutionalised.  The  wider  range  which 
these  practices  give  prevents  the  development  of  obses- 
sions of  guilt  which  are  so  frequent  a  cause  of  malad- 
justment among  us.  The  more  varied  practices  per- 
mitted heterosexually  preserve  any  individual  from 
being  penalised  for  special  conditioning.  This  accept-  | 
an£e_o£jajffiid£r..range  as,."normal"  provides  a  cultural/! 
atmosphere  in  which  frigidity  and  psychic  impotence  do  / 
not  occur  and  in  which  a  satisfactory  sex  adjustment  inf 
marriage  can  always  be  established.  —The  acceptancej 
of  such  an  attitude  without  in  any  way  accepting  pro- 
miscuity would  go  a  long  way  towards  solving  many 
marital  impasses  and  emptying  our  park  benches  and 
our  houses  of  prostitution. 

Among  the  factors  in  the  Samoan  scheme  of  life  J 
which  are  influential  in  producing  stable,  well-adjusted, 
robust  individualsjv  the  organisation  of  the  family  and 
the  attitude  towards  sex  are  undoubtedly  the  most  im- 
.^^^portantr)  But  it  is  necessary  to  note  also  the  general 
^3^educational  concept  which  disapproves  of  precocity  and 
coddles  the  slow,  the  laggard,  the  inept.  In  a  society 
where  the  tempo  of  life  was  faster,  the  rewards  greater, 

[223] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

the  amount  of  energy  expended  larger,  the  bright  chil- 
dren might  develop  symptoms  of  boredom.  But  the 
slower  pace  dictated  by  the  climate,  the  complacent, 
peaceful  society,  and  the  c.Q0ap£a§gfeQ4^  SiL  th&  iaiKSi 
in  its  blatant  precocious  display  of  individuality  which 
drains  off  some  of  the  discontent  which  the  bright  child 
feels,  prevent  any  child  from  becoming  too  bored. 
And  the  dullard  is  not  goaded  and  dragged  along 
faster  than  he  is  able  until,  sick  with  making  an  im- 
possible effort,  he  gives  up  entirely.  This  educational 
policy  also  tends  to  blur  individual  differences  and  so 
to  minimise  jealousy,  rivalry,  emulation,  those  social 
attitudes  which  arise  out  of  discrepancies  of  endowment 
and  are  so  far-reaching  in  their  efiFects  upon  the  adult 
personality. 

It  is  one  way  of  solving  the  problem  of  differences 
between  individuals  and  a  method  of  solution  exceed- 
ingly congenial  to  a  strict  adult  world.  The  longer  the 
child  is  kept  in  a  subject,  non-initiating  state,  the  more 
I  of  the  general  cultural  attitude  it  will  absorb,  the  less 
i'  of  a  disturbing  element  it  will  become.  Furthermore, 
if  time  is  given  them,  the  dullards  can  learn  enough 
to  provide  a  stout  body  of  conservatives  upon  whose 
shoulders  the  burden  of  the  civilisation  can  safely  rest. 
Giving  titles  to  young  men  would  put  a  premium  upon 
the  exceptional  J  giving  titles  to  men  of  forty,  who 
have  at  last  acquired  sufficient  training  to  hold  them, 
assures  the  continuation  of  the  usual.  It  also  discour- 
ages the  brilliant  so  that  their  social  contribution  is 
slighter  than  it  might  otherwise  have  been. 

[224] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

We  are  slowly  feeling  our  way  towards  a  solution 
of  this  problem,  ac  least  in  the  case  of  formal  educa- 
tion. LTntil  very  recently  our  educational  system  of- 
fered only  two  very  partial  solutions  of  the  difficulties 
inherent  in  a  great  discrepancy  between  children  of 
different  endowment  and  different  rates  of  develop- 
ment. One  solution  was  to  allow  a  sufficiently  long 
time  to  each  educational  step  so  that  all  but  the  men- 
tally defective  could  succeed,  a  method  similar  to  the 
Samoan  one  and  without  its  compensatory  dance  floor. 
The  bright  child,  held  back,  at  intolerably  boring  tasks, 
unless  he  was  fortunate  enough  to  find  some  other  out- 
let for  his  unused  energy,  was  likely  to  expend  it  upon 
truancy  and  general  delinquency.  Our  only  alterna- 
tive to  this  was  "skipping"  a  child  from  one  grade  to 
another,  relying  upon  the  child's  superior  intelligence 
to  bridge  the  gaps.  This  was  a  method  congenial  to 
American  enthusiasm  for  meteoric  careers  from  canal 
boat  and  log  cabin  to  the  White  House.  Its  disad- 
vantages in  giving  the  child  a  sketchy,  discontinuous 
background,  in  removing  it  from  its  age  group,  have 
been  enumerated  too  often  to  need  repetition  here.  But 
it  is  worthy  of  note  that  with  a  very  different  valuation 
of  individual  ability  than  that  entertained  by  Samoan 
society  we  used  for  years  one  solution,  similar  and 
less  satisfactory  than  theirs,  in  our  formal  educational 
attempts. 

The  methods  which  experimental  educators  are  sub- 
stituting for  these  unsatisfactory  solutions,  schemes  like 
the   Dalton  Plan,  or  the   rapidly  moving  classes  in 

[225] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

which  a  group  of  children  can  move  ahead  at  a  high, 
even  rate  of  speed  without  hurt  to  themselves  or  to 
their  duller  fellows,  is  a  striking  example  of  the  re- 
sults of  applying  reason  to  the  institutions  of  our  so- 
ciety. The  old  red  school-house  was  almost  as  hap- 
hazard and  accidental  a  phenomenon  as  the  Samoan 
dance  floor.  It  was  an  institution  which  had  grown 
up  in  response  to  a  vaguely  felt,  unanalysed  need. 
Its  methods  were  analogous  to  the  methods  used  by 
primitive  peoples,  non-rationalised  solutions  of  press- 
ing problems.  But  the  institutionalisation  of  different 
methods  of  education  for  children  of  different  capaci- 
ties and  different  rates  of  development  is  not  like  any- 
thing which  we  find  in  Samoa  or  in  any  other  primi- 
tive society.  It  is  the  conscious,  intelligent  directing 
of  human  institutions  in  response  to  observed  human 
needs. 
^  Still  another  factor  in  Samoan  education  which  re- 
'  suits  in  different  attitudes  is  the  place  of  work  and  play 
in  the  children's  lives.  Samoan  children  do  not  learn 
to  work  through  learning  to  play,  as  the  children  of 
many  primitive  peoples  do.  Nor  are  they  permitted  a 
•/  period  of  lack  of  responsibility  such  as  our  children 
are  allowed.  From  the  time  they  are  four  or  five 
years  old  they  perform  definite  tasks,  graded  to  their 
strength  and  intelligence,  but  still  tasks  which  have  a 
meaning  in  the  structure  of  the  whole  society.  This 
does  not  mean  that  they  have  less  time  for  play  than 
American  children  who  are  shut  up  in  schools  from 

[226] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

nine  to  three  o'clock  every  day.  Before  the  introduc- 
tion of  schools  to  complicate  the  ordered  routine  of 
their  lives,  the  time  spent  by  the  Samoan  child  in  run- 
ning errands,  sweeping  the  house,  carrying  water,  and 
taking  actual  care  of  the  baby,  was  possibly  less  ^than 
that  which  the  American  school  child  devotes  to  her 
studies. 

The  difference  lies  not  in  the  proportion  of  time  in 
which  their  activities  are  directed  and  the  proportion 
in  which  they  are  free,  but  rather  in  the  difference  of 
attitude.  With  the  professionalisation  of  education  and 
the  specialisation  of  industrial  tasks  which  has  stripped 
the  individual  home  of  its  former  variety  of  activities, 
our  children  are  not  made  to  feel  that  the  time  they 
do  devote  to  supervised  activity  is  functionally  related 
to  the  world  of  adult  activity.  Although  this  lack  of 
connection  is  more  apparent  than  real,  it  is  still  suffi- 
ciently vivid  to  be  a  powerful  determinant  in  the  child's 
attitude.  The  Samoan  girl  who  tends  babies,  carries 
water,  sweeps  the  floor  j  or  the  little  boy  who  digs  for 
bait,  or  collects  cocoanuts,  has  no  such  difficulty.  The 
necessary  nature  of  their  tasks  is  obvious.  jAnd  the ». 
practice  of  giving  a  child  a  task  which  he  can  do  well 
and  never  permitting  a  childish,  inefficient  tinkering 
with  adult  apparatus,  such  as  we  permit  to  our  chil- 
dren, who  bang  aimlessly  and  destructively  on  their 
fathers'  typewriters,  results  in  a  different  attitude  to^ 
wards  work.'^ American  children  spendTiours  in  schools 
learning  tasks  whose  visible  relation  to  their  mothers' 

[227] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

and  fathers'  activities  is  often  quite  impossible  to  rec- 
ognise. Their  participation  in  adults'  activities  is  either 
in  terms  of  toys,  tea-sets  and  dolls  and  toy  automobiles, 
or  else  a  meaningless  and  harmful  tampering  with  the 
electric  light  system.  (It  must  be  understood  that 
here,  as  always,  when  I  say  American,  I  do  not  mean 
those  Americans  recently  arrived  from  Europe,  who 
still  present  a  different  tradition  of  education.  Such 
a  group  would  be  the  Southern  Italians,  who  still  ex- 
pect productive  work  from  their  children.) 
I  So  our  children  make  a  false  set  of  categories,  work, 
play,  and  school  j  work  for  adults,  play  for  children's 
1  pleasure,  and  schools  as  an  inexplicable  nuisance  with 
I  some  compensations.  These  false  distinctions  are  likely 
to  produce  all  sorts  of  strange  attitudes,  an  apathetic 
treatment  of  a  school  which  bears  no  known  relation 
to  life,  a  false  dichotomy  between  work  and  play,  which 
may  result  either  in  a  dread  of  work  as  implying  irk- 
some responsibility  or  in  a  later  contempt  for  play  as 
childish. 

The  Samoan  child's  dichotomy  is  different.  Work 
»  consists  of  those  necessary  tasks  which  keep  the  social 
life  going:  planting  and  harvesting  and  preparation  of 
food,  fishing,  house-building,  mat-making,  care  of  chil- 
dren, collecting  of  property  to  validate  marriages  and 
births  and  succession  to  titles  and  to  entertain  strangers, 
these  are  the  necessary  activities  of  life,  activities  in 
which  every  member  of  the  community,  down  to  the 
'  smallest  child,  has  a  part.     Work  is  not  a  way  of  ac- 

[228] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

quiring  leisure  j  where  every  household  produces  its 
own  food  and  clothes  and  furniture,  where  there  is  no 
large  amount  of  fixed  capital  and  households  of  high 
rank  are  simply  characterised  by  greater  industry  in  the 
discharge  of  greater  obligations,  our  whole  picture  of 
saving,  of  investment,  of  deferred  enjoyment,  is  com- 
pletely absent.  (There  is  even  a  lack  of  clearly  defined 
seasons  of  harvest,  which  would  result  in  special  abun- 
dance of  food  and  consequent  feasting.  Food  is  always 
abundant,  except  in  some  particular  village  where  a 
few  weeks  of  scarcity  may  follow  a  period  of  lavish 
entertaining.)  Rather,  work  is  something  which  goes 
on  all  the  time  for  every  onej  no  one  is  exempt  j  few 
are  overworked.  There  is  social  reward  for  the  indus- 
trious, social  toleration  for  the  man  who  does  barely 
enough.  And  there  is  always  leisure — leisure,  be  it 
noted,  which  is  not.the  result  of  hard  work  or  accumu- 
lated capital  at  all,  but  is  merely  the  result  of  a  kindly 
climate,  a  small  population,  a  well-integrated  social 
system,  and  no  social  demands  for  spectacular  expendi- 
ture. And  play  is  what  one  does  with  the  time  left 
over  from  working,  a  way  of  filling  in  the  wide  spaces 
in  a  structure  of  unirksome  work. 

Play  includes  dancing,  singing,  games,  weaving  neck- 
laces of  flowers,  flirting,  repartee,  all  forms  of  sex  ac- 
tivity. And  there  are  social  institutions  like  the  cere- 
monial inter-village  visit  which  partake  of  both  work 
and  play.  But  the  distinctions  between  work  as  some- 
thing one  has  to  do  but  dislikes,  and  play  as  something 

[229] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

one  wants  to  do ;  of  work  as  the  main  business  of  adults, 
play  as  the  main  concern  of  children,  are  conspicuously 
absent.  Children's  play  is  like  adults'  play  in  kind, 
interest,  and  in  its  proportion  to  work.  And  the  Sa- 
moan  child  has  no  desire  to  turn  adult  activities  into 
play,  to  translate  one  sphere  into  the  other.  I  had  a 
box  of  white  clay  pipes  for  blowing  soap  bubbles  sent 
me.  The  children  were  familiar  with  soap  bubbles,  but 
their  native  method  of  blowing  them  was  very  inferior 
to  the  use  of  clay  pipes.  But  after  a  few  minutes'  de- 
light in  the  unusual  size  and  beauty  of  the  soap  bub- 
bles, one  little  girl  after  another  asked  me  if  she  might 
please  take  her  pipe  home  to  her  mother,  for  pipes 
were  meant  to  smoke,  not  to  play  with.  Foreign  dolls 
did  not  interest  them,  and  they  have  no  dolls  of  their 
own,  although  children  of  other  islands  weave  dolls 
from  the  palm  leaves  from  which  Samoan  children 
weave  balls.  They  never  make  toy  houses,  nor  play 
house,  nor  sail  toy  boats.  Little  boys  would  climb  into 
a  real  outrigger  canoe  and  practise  paddling  it  within 
the  safety  of  the  lagoon.  This  whole  attitude  gave  a 
greater  coherence  to  the  children's  lives  than  we  often 
afford  our  children. 

The  Intelligibility  of  a  child's  life  among  us  Is  meas- 
ured only  In  terms  of  the  behaviour  of  other  children. 
If  all  the  other  children  go  to  school  the  child  who 
does  not  feels  Incongruous  In  their  midst.  If  the  little 
girl  next  door  Is  taking  music  lessons,  why  can't  Maryj 
or  why  must  Mary  take  music  lessons,  if  the  other  lit- 

[230] 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

tie  girl  doesn't  take  them.  But  so  sharp  is  our  sense 
of  difference  between  the  concerns  of  children  and  of 
adults  that  the  child  does  not  learn  to  judge  its  own 
behaviour  in  relationship  to  adult  life.  So  children 
often  learn  to  regard  play  as  something  inherently  un- 
dignified, and  as  adults  mangle  pitifully  their  few 
moments  of  leisure.  But  the  Samoan  child  measures 
her  every  act  of  work  or  play  in  terms  of  her  whole 
community  J  each  item  of  conduct  is  dignified  in  terms 
of  its  realised  relationship  to  the  only  standard  she 
knows,  the  life  of  a  Samoan  village.  So  complex  and 
stratified  a  society  as  ours  cannot  hope  to  develop  spon- 
taneously any  such  simple  scheme  of  education.  Again 
we  will  be  hard  put  to  it  to  devise  ways  of  participation 
for  children,  and  means  of  articulating  their  school  life 
with  the  rest  of  life  which  will  give  them  the  same 
dignity  which  Samoa  affords  her  children. 

..Last  among  the  cultural  differences  which  may  in- 
fluence the  emotional  stability  of  the  child  is  the  lack 
of  pressure  to  make  important  choices.  Children  are 
urged  to  learn,  urged  to  behave,  urged  to  work,  but 
they  are  not  urged  to  hasten  in  the  choices  which  they 
make  themselves.  The  first  point  at  which  this  atti- 
tude makes  itself  felt  is  in  the  matter  of  the  brother 
and  sister  taboo,  a  cardinal  point  of  modesty  and  de- 
cency. Yet  the  exact  stage  at  which  the  taboo  should 
be  observed  is  always  left  to  the  younger  child.  When 
it  reaches  a  point  of  discretion,  of  understanding,  it 
will  of  itself  feel  "ashamed"  and  establish  the  formal 

[231] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

barrier  which  will  last  until  old  age.  Likewise,  sex 
activity  is  never  urged  upon  the  young  people,  nor 
marriage  forced  upon  them  at  a  tender  age.  Where 
the  possibilities  of  deviation  from  the  accepted  standard 
are  so  slight,  a  few  years  leeway  holds  no  threat  for 
the  society.  The  child  who  comes  later  to  a  realisa- 
tion of  the  brother  and  sister  taboo  really  endangers 
nothing. 

This  laissez  faire  attitude  has  been  carried  over  into 
the  Samoan  Christian  Church.  The  Samoan  saw  no 
reason  why  young  unmarried  people  should  be  pressed 
to  make  momentous  decisions  which  would  spoil  part 
of  their  fun  in  life.  Time  enough  for  such  serious 
matters  after  they  were  married  or  later  still,  when 
they  were  quite  sure  of  what  steps  they  were  taking 
and  were  in  less  danger  of  falling  from  grace  every 
month  or  so.  The  missionary  authorities,  realising  the 
virtues  of  going  slowly  and  sorely  vexed  to  reconcile 
Samoan  sex  ethics  with  a  Western  European  code,  saw 
the  great  disadvantages  of  unmarried  Church  members 
who  were  not  locked  up  in  Church  schools.  Conse- 
quently, far  from  urging  the  adolescent  to  think  upon 
her  soul  the  native  pastor  advises  her  to  wait  until  she 
is  older,  which  she  is  only  too  glad  to  do. 

But,  especially  in  the  case  of  our  Protestant  churches, 
there  is  a  strong  preference  among  us  for  the  appeal 
to  youth.  The  Reformation,  with  its  emphasis  upon 
individual  choice,  was  unwilling  to  accept  the  tacit 
habitual  Church  membership  which  was  the  Catholic 

[232] 


I 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

pattern,  a  membership  marked  by  additional  sacra- 
mental gifts  but  demanding  no  sudden  conversion,  no 
renewal  of  religious  feeling.  But  the  Protestant  solu- 
tion is  to  defer  the  choice  only  so  far  as  necessary,  and 
the  moment  the  child  reaches  an  age  which  may  be 
called  "years  of  discretion"  it  makes  a  strong,  dramatic 
appeal.  This  appeal  is  reinforced  by  parental  and 
social  pressure  3  the  child  is  bidden  to  choose  now  and 
wisely.  While  such  a  position  in  the  churches  which 
stem  from  the  Reformation  and  its  strong  emphasis  on 
individual  choice  was  historically  inevitable,  it  is  regret- 
table that  the  convention  has  lasted  so  long.  It  has 
even  been  taken  over  by  non-sectarian  reform  groups, 
all  of  whom  regard  the  adolescent  child  as  the  most 
legitimate  field . of .  act i vity. 

In  all  of  these  comparisons  between  Samoan  and 
American  culture,  many  points  are  useful  only  in 
throwing  a  spotlight  upon  our  own  solutions,  while  in 
others  it  is  possible  to  find  suggestions  for  change. 
Whether  or  not  we  envy  other  peoples  one  of  their 
solutions,  our  attitude  towards  our  own  solutions  must 
be  greatly  broadened  and  deepened  by  a  consideration 
of  the  way  in  which  other  peoples  have  met  the  same 
problems.  Realising  that  our  own  ways  are  not  hu-  ' 
manly  inevitable  nor  God-ordained,  but  are  the  fruit  \ 
of  a  long  and  turbulent  history,  we  may  well  examine 
in  turn  all  of  our  institutions,  thrown  into  strong  relief 
against  the  history  of  other  civilisations,  and  weighing 
them  in  the  balance,  be  not  afraid  to  find  them  wanting. 


XIV 

EDUCATION    FOR    CHOICE 

WE  have  been  comparing  point  for  point,  our  civili- 
sation and  the  simpler  civilisation  of  Samoa,  in  order 
to  illuminate  our  own  methods  of  education.  If  now 
we  turn  from  the  Samoan  picture  and  take  away  only 
the  main  lesson  which  we  learned  there,  that  adoles- 
cence is  not  necessarily  a  time  of  stress  and  strain,  but 
that  cultural  conditions  make  it  so,  can  we  draw  any 
conclusions  which  might  bear  fruit  In  the  training  of 
our  adolescents? 
\  At  first  blush  the  answer  seems  simple  enough.  If 
.  adolescents  are  only  plunged  into  difficulties  and  dis- 
tress because  of  conditions  in  their  social  environment, 
then  by  all  means  let  us  so  modify  that  environment 
as  to  reduce  this  stress  and  eliminate  this  strain  and 
anguish  of  adjustment.  But,  unfortunately,  the  condi- 
tions which  vex  our  adolescents  are  the  flesh  and  bone 
of  our  society,  no  more  subject  to  straightforward 
manipulation  upon  our  part  than  is  the  language  which 
we  speak.  We  can  alter  a  syllable  here,  a  construction 
there  J  but  the  great  and  far-reaching  changes  in  lin- 
guistic structure  (as  in  all  parts  of  culture)  are  the 
work  of  time,  a  work  in  which  each  individual  plays 
an  unconscious  and  inconsiderable  part.    The  principal 

[234] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

causes  of  our  adolescents'  difficulty  are  the  presence  of 
conflicting  standards  and  the  belief  that  every  indi- 
vidual should  make  his  or  her  own  choices,  coupled 
with  a  feeling  that  choice  is  an  important  matter.  Given! 
these  cultural  attitudes,  adolescence,  regarded  now  not 
as  a  period  of  physiological  change,  for  we  know  that 
physiological  puberty  need  not  produce  conflict,  but  as 
the  beginning  of  mental  and  emotional  maturity,  is 
bound  to  be  filled  with  conflicts  and  difliculties.  A  so- 
ciety which  is  clamouring  for  choice,  which  is  filled 
with  many  articulate  groups,  each  urging  its  own  brand 
of  salvation,  its  own  variety  of  economic  philosophy, 
will  give  each  new  generation  no  peace  until  all  have 
chosen  or^one  under,  unable  to  bear  the  conditions  of 
choice.  The  stress  is  in  our  civilisation,  not  in  the 
physical  changes  through  which  our  children  pass^.but  it 
is  none  the  less  real  nor  the  less  inevitable  in  twentieth- 
century  America. 

And  if  we  look  at  the  particular  forms  which  this 
need  for  choice  takes,  the  difliculty  of  the  adolescent's 
position  is  only  documented  further.  Because  the  dis- 
cussion is  principally  concerned  with  girls,  I  shall  dis- 
cuss the  problem  from  the  girls'  point  of  view,  but  in 
many  respects  the  plight  of  the  adolescent  boy  is  very 
similar.  Between  fourteen  and  eighteen,  the  average 
American  boy  and  girl  finish  school.  They  are  now 
ready  to  go  to  work  and  must  choose  what  type  of 
work  they  wish  to  do.  It  might  be  argued  that  they 
often  have  remarkably  little  choice.     Their  education. 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

the  part  of  the  country  in  which  they  live,  their  skill 
with  their  hands,  will  combine  to  dictate  choice  perhaps 
between  the  job  of  cash  girl  in  a  department  store  or 
of  telephone  operator,  or  of  clerk  or  miner.  But  small 
as  Is  the  number  of  choices  open  to  them  in  actuality, 
the  significance  of  this  narrow  field  of  opportunity  is 
blurred  by  our  American  theory  of  endlejs_possibilides. 
Moving  pictufeTlfiagazine,  newspaper,  all  reiterate  the 
Cinderella  story  in  one  form  or  another,  and  often  the 
interest  lies  as  much  in  the  way  cash  girl  456  becomes 
head  buyer  as  in  her  subsequent  nuptials  with  the 
owner  of  the  store.  Our  occupational  classes  are  not 
fixed.  So  many  children  are  better  educated  and  hold 
more  skilled  positions  than  their  parents  that  even  the 
ever-present  discrepancy  between  opportunities  open  to 
men  and  opportunities  open  to  women,  although  pres- 
ent in  a  girl's  competition  with  her  brother,  is  often 
absent  as  between  her  unskilled  father  and  herself.  It 
is  needless  to  argue  that  these  attitudes  are  products 
of  conditions  which  no  longer  exist,  particularly  the 
presence  of  a  frontier  and  a  large  amount  of  free  land 
which  provided  a  perpetual  alternative  of  occupational 
choice.  A  set  which  was  given  to  our  thinking  in  pio- 
neer days  is  preserved  in  other  terms.  As  long  as  we 
have  immigrants  from  non-English-speaking  countries, 
the  gap  in  opportunities  between  non-English-speaking 
parents  and  English-speaking  children  will  be  vivid  and 
dramatic.  Until  our  standard  of  education  becomes  far 
more  stable  than  it  is  at  present,  the  continual  raising 

[236] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

of  the  age  and  grade  until  which  schooling  is  compul- 
sory ensures  a  wide  educational  gap  between  many  par- 
ents and  their  children.  And  occupational  shifts  like 
the  present  movements  of  farmers  and  farm  workers 
into  urban  occupations,  give  the  same  picture.  When 
the  agricultural  worker  pictures  urban  work  as  a  step 
up  in  the  social  scale,  and  the  introduction  of  scientific 
farming  is  so  radically  reducing  the  numbers  needed 
in  agriculture,  the  movement  of  young  people  born  on 
the  farm  to  city  jobs  is  bound  to  dazzle  the  imagina- 
tion of  our  farming  states  during  the  next  generation 
at  least.  The  substitution  of  machines  for  unskilled 
workers  and  the  absorption  of  many  of  the  workers 
and  their  children  into  positions  where  they  manipulate 
machines  affords  another  instance  of  the  kind  of  his- 
torical change  which  keeps  our  myth  of  endless  oppor- 
tunity alive.  Add  to  these  special  features,  like  the 
eifect  upon  the  prospects  of  Negro  children  of  the  tre- 
mendous exodus  from  the  southern  corn  fields,  or  upon 
the  children  of  New  England  mill-hands  who  are  de- 
prived of  an  opportunity  to  follow  dully  in  their  par- 
ents' footsteps  and  must  at  least  seek  new  fields  if  not 
better  ones. 

Careful  students  of  the  facts  may  tell  us  that  class  \ 
lines  are  becoming  fixed  j  that  while  the  children  of 
immigrants  make  advances  beyond  their  parents,  they 
move  up  in  stepj  that  there  are  fewer  spectacular  suc- 
cesses among  them  than  there  used  to  bej  that  it  is 
much  more  possible  to  predict  the  future  status  of  the 

[237] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

child  from  the  present  status  of  the  parent.  But  this 
measured  comment  of  the  statistician  has  not  filtered 
into  our  literature,  nor  our  moving  pictures,  nor  in  any 
way  served  to  minimise  the  vividness  of  the  improve- 
ment in  the  children's  condition  as  compared  with  the 
condition  of  their  parents.  Especially  in  cities,  there  is 
no  such  obvious  demonstration  of  the  fact  that  im- 
provement is  the  rule  for  the  children  of  a  given  class 
or  district,  and  not  merely  a  case  of  John  Riley's  mak- 
ing twenty  dollars  a  week  as  a  crossing  man  while  Mary, 
his  daughter,  who  has  gone  to  business  school,  makes 
twenty-five  dollars  a  week,  working  shorter  hours. 
The  lure  of  correspondence  school  advertising,  the 
efflorescence  of  a  doctrine  of  short-cuts  to  fame,  all 
contrive  to  make  an  American  boy  or  girl's  choice  of 
a  job  different  from  that  of  English  children,  born 
into  a  society  where  stratification  is  so  old,  so  institu- 
tionalised, that  the  dullest  cannot  doubt  it.  So  eco- 
nomic conditions  force  them  to  go  to  work  and  every- 
thing combines  to  make  that  choice  a  difficult  one, 
whether  in  terms  of  abandoning  a  care-free  existence 
for  a  confining,  uncongenial  one,  or  in  terms  of  bitter 
rebellion  against  the  choice  which  they  must  make  in 
contrast  to  the  opportunities  which  they  are  told  are 
open  to  all  Americans. 

And  taking  a  job  introduces  other  factors  of  difficulty 
into  the  adolescent  girl's  home  situation.  Her  depend- 
ence has  always  been  demonstrated  in  terms  of  limits 
and  curbs  set  upon  her  spontaneous  activity  in  every 

[238] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

field  from  spending  money  to  standards  of  dress  and 
behaviour.  Because  of  the  essentially  pecuniary  nature 
of  our  society,  the  relationship  of  limitation  in  terms 
of  allowance  to  limitation  of  behaviour  are  more  far- 
reaching  than  in  earlier  times.  Parental  disapproval 
of  extreme  styles  of  clothing  would  formerly  have 
expressed  itself  in  a  mother's  making  her  daughter's 
dresses  high  in  the  neck  and  long  in  the  sleeve.  Now 
it  expresses  itself  in  control  through  money.  If  Mary 
doesn't  stop  purchasing  chiffon  stockings,  Mary  shall 
have  no  money  to  buy  stockings.  Similarly,  a  taste  for 
cigarettes  and  liquor  can  only  be  gratified  through 
money  J  going  to  the  movies,  buying  books  and  maga- 
zines of  which  her  parents  disapprove,  are  all  depend- 
ent upon  a  girl's  having  the  money,  as  well  as  upon 
her  eluding  more  direct  forms  of  control.  And  the 
importance  of  a  supply  of  money  in  gratifying  all  of 
a  girl's  desires  for  clothes  and  for  amusement  makes 
money  the  easiest  channel  through  which  to  exert  pa- 
rental authority.  So  easy  is  it,  that  the  threat  of  cut- 
ting off  an  allowance,  taking  away  the  money  for  the 
one  movie  a  week  or  the  coveted  hat,  has  taken  the 
place  of  the  whippings  and  bread-and-water  exiles 
which  were  favourite  disciplinary  methods  in  the  last 
century.  The  parents  come  to  rely  upon  this  method 
of  control.  The  daughters  come  to  see  all  censoring 
of  their  behaviour,  moral,  religious  or  social,  the  eth- 
ical code  and  the  slightest  sumptuary  provisions  in 
terms  of  an  economic  threat.     And  then  at  sixteen  or 

[239] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

seventeen  the  daughter  gets  a  job.  No  matter  how 
conscientiously  she  may  contribute  her  share  to  the 
expenses  of  the  household,  it  is  probably  only  in  homes 
where  a  European  tradition  still  lingers  that  the  wage- 
earning  daughter  gives  all  of  her  earning  to  her  par- 
ents. (This,  of  course,  excludes  the  cases  where  the 
daughter  supports  her  parents,  where  the  vesting  of 
the  economic  responsibility  in  her  hands  changes  the 
picture  of  parental  control  in  another  fashion.)  For 
the  first  time  in  her  life,  she  has  an  income  of  her  own, 
with  no  strings  of  morals  or  of  manners  attached  to  its 
use.  Her  parents'  chief  instrument  of  discipline  is 
shattered  at  one  blow,  but  not  their  desire  to  direct 
their  daughters'  lives.  They  have  not  pictured  their 
exercise  of  control  as  the  right  of  those  who  provide, 
to  control  those  for  whom  they  provide.  They  have 
pictured  it  in  far  more  traditional  terms,  the  right  of 
parents  to  control  their  children,  an  attitude  reinforced 
by  years  of  practising  such  control. 

But  the  daughter  is  in  the  position  of  one  who  has 
yielded  unwillingly  to  some  one  who  held  a  whip  in 
his  hand,  and  now  sees  the  whip  broken.  Her  unwill- 
ingness to  obey,  her  chafing  under  special  parental  re- 
strictions which  children  accept  as  inevitable  in  simpler 
cultures,  is  again  a  feature  of  our  conglomerate  civili- 
sation. When  all  the  children  in  the  community  go  to 
bed  at  curfew,  one  child  is  not  as  likely  to  rail  against 
her  parents  for  enforcing  the  rule.  But  when  the  little 
girl  next  door  is  allowed  to  stay  up  until  eleven  o'clock, 

[240] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

why  must  Mary  go  to  bed  at  eight?  If  all  of  her  com- 
panions at  school  are  allowed  to  smoke,  why  can't  she? 
And  conversely,  for  it  is  a  question  of  the  absence  of 
a  common  standard  far  more  than  of  the  nature  of  the 
standards,  if  all  the  other  little  girls  are  given  lovely 
fussy  dresses  and  hats  with  flowers  and  ribbons,  why 
must  she  be  dressed  in  sensible,  straight  linen  dresses 
and  simple  round  hats?  Barring  an  excessive  and  pas- 
sionate devotion  of  the  children  to  their  parents,  a  de- 
votion of  a  type  which  brings  other  more  serious  diffi- 
culties in  its  wake,  children  in  a  heterogeneous  civili- 
sation will  not  accept  unquestioningly  their  parents' 
judgment,  and  the  most  obedient  will  temper  present 
compliance  with  the  hope  of  future  emancipation. 

In  a  primitive,  homogenous  community,  disciplinary 
measures  of  parents  are  expended  upon  securing  small 
concessions  from  children,  in  correcting  the  slight  de- 
viations which  occur  within  one  pattern  of  behaviour. 
But  in  our  society,  home  discipline  is  used  to  establish 
one  set  of  standards  as  over  against  other  sets  of  stand- 
ards,; each  family  group  is  fighting  some  kind  of  battle, 
bearing  the  onus  of  those  who  follow  a  middle  course, 
stoutly  defending  a  cause  already  lost  in  the  commu- 
nity at  large,  or  valiantly  attempting  to  plant  a  new 
standard  far  in  advance  of  their  neighbours.  This 
propagandist  aspect  greatly  increases  the  importance  of 
home  discipline  in  the  development  of  a  girPs  person- 
ality. So  we  have  the  picture  of  parents,  shorn  of  their 
economic  authority,  trying  to  coerce  the  girl  who  still 

[241] 


J 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

lives  beneath  their  roof  into  an  acceptance  of  standards 
against  which  she  is  rebelling.  In  this  attempt  they 
often  find  themselves  powerless  and  as  a  result  the 
control  of  the  home  breaks  down  suddenly,  and  breaks 
down  just  at  the  point  where  the  girl,  faced  with  other 
important  choices,  needs  a  steadying  home  environ- 
ment. 

It  is  at  about  this  time  that  sex  begins  to  play  a  role 
in  the  girPs  life,  and  here  also  conflicting  choices  are 
presented  to  her.  If  she  chooses  the  freer  standards 
of  her  own  generation,  she  comes  in  conflict  with  her 
parents,  and  perhaps  more  importantly  with  the  ideals 
which  her  parents  have  instilled.  The  present  problem 
of  the  sex  experimentation  of  young  people  would  be 
greatly  simplified  if  it  were  conceived  of  as  experi- 
mentation instead  of  as  rebellion,  if  no  Puritan  self- 
accusations  vexed  their  consciences.  The  introduction  of 
an  experimentation  so  much  wider  and  more  dangerous 
presents  sufficient  problems  in  our  lack  of  social  canons 
for  such  behaviour.  For  a  new  departure  in  the  field 
of  personal  relations  is  always  accompanied  by  the 
failure  of  those  who  are  not  strong  enough  to  face  an 
unpatterned  situation.  Canons  of  honour,  of  personal 
obligation,  of  the  limits  of  responsibilities,  grow  up 
only  slowly.  And,  of  first  experimenters,  many  perish 
in  uncharted  seas.  But  when  there  is  added  to  the  pit- 
falls of  experiment,  the  suspicion  that  the  experiment 
is  wrong  and  the  need  for  secrecy,  lying,  fear,  the 
strain  is  so  great  that  frequent  downfall  is  inevitable. 

[242] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

And  if  the  girl  chooses  the  other  course,  decides  to 
remain  true  to  the  tradition  of  the  last  generation,  she 
wins  the  sympathy  and  support  of  her  parents  at  the 
expense  of  the  comradeship  of  her  contemporaries. 
Whichever  way  the  die  falls,  the  choice  is  attended  by 
mental  anguish.  Only  occasional  children  escape  by 
various  sorts  of  luck,  a  large  enough  group  who  have 
the  same  standards  so  that  they  are  supported  either 
against  their  parents  or  against  the  majority  of  their 
age  mates,  or  by  absorption  in  some  other  interest. 
But,  with  the  exception  of  students  for  whom  the  prob- 
lem of  personal  relations  is  sometimes  mercifully  de- 
ferred for  a  later  settlement,  those  who  find  some 
other  interest  so  satifying  that  they  take  no  interest  in 
the  other  sex,  often  find  themselves  old  maids  without 
any  opportunity  to  recoup  their  positions.  The  fear 
of  spinsterhood  is  a  fear  which  shadows  the  life  of 
no  primitive  woman j  it  is  another  item  of  maladjust- 
ment which  our  civilisation  has  produced. 

To  the  problem  of  present  conduct  are  added  all  the 
perplexities  introduced  by  varying  concepts  of  mar-  • 
riage,  the  conflict  between  deferring  marriage  until  a 
competence  is  assured,  or  marrying  and  sharing  the 
expenses  of  the  home  with  a  struggling  young  husband. 
The  knowledge  of  birth  control,  while  greatly  digni- 
fying human  life  by  introducing  the  element  of  choice 
at  the  point  where  human  beings  have  before  been 
most  abjectly  subject  to  nature,  introduces  further 
perplexities.     It  complicates  the  issue  from  a  straight        \ 

[243] 


s 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

marriage-home-and-children  plan  o£  life  versus  inde- 
pendent spinsterhood  by  permitting  marriages  without 
children,  earlier  marriages,  marriages  and  careers,  sex 
relations  without  marriage  and  the  responsibility  of  a 
home.  And  because  the  majority  of  girls  still  wish  to 
marry  and  regard  their  occupations  as  stop-gaps,  these 
problems  not  only  influence  their  attitude  towards  men, 
but  also  their  attitude  towards  their  work,  and  prevent 
them  from  having  a  sustained  interest  in  the  work 
which  they  are  forced  to  do. 

Then  we  must  add  to  the  difficulties  inherent  in  a 
new  economic  status  and  the  necessity  of  adopting  some 
standard  of  sex  relations,  ethical  and  religious  issues 
to  be  solved.  Here  again  the  home  is  a  powerful  fac- 
tor j  the  parents  use  every  ounce  of  emotional  pressure 
to  enlist  their  children  in  one  of  the  dozen  armies  of 
salvation.  The  stress  of  the  revival  meeting,  the  pres- 
sure of  pastor  and  parent  gives  them  no  peace.  And 
the  basic  difficulties  of  reconciling  the  teachings  of  au- 
thority with  the  practices  of  society  and  the  findings 
of  science,  all  trouble  and  perplex  children  already 
harassed  beyond  endurance. 

Granting  that  society  presents  too  many  problems 
to  her  adolescents,  demands  too  many  momentous  de- 
cisions on  a  few  months'  notice,  what  is  to  be  done 
about  it?  One  panacea  suggested  would  be  to  postpone 
at  least  some  of  the  decisions,  keep  the  child  econom- 
ically dependent,  or  segregate  her  from  all  contact  with 
the  other  sex,  present  her  with  only  one  set  of  religious 

[244] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

ideas  until  she  is  older,  more  poised,  better  able  to  deal 
critically  with  the  problems  which  will  confront  her. 
In  a  less  articulate  fashion,  such  an  idea  is  back  of 
various  schemes  for  the  prolongation  of  youth,  through 
raising  the  working  age,  raising  the  school  age,  shield- 
ing school  children  from  a  knowledge  of  contro- 
versies like  evolution  versus  fundamentalism,  or  any 
knowledge  of  sex  hygiene  or  birth  control.  Even  if 
such  measures,  specially  initiated  and  legislatively  en- 
forced, could  accomplish  the  end  which  they  seek  and 
postpone  the  period  of  choice,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
such  a  development  would  be  desirable.  It  is  unfair 
that  very  young  children  should  be  the  battleground 
for  conflicting  standards,  that  their  development  should 
be  hampered  by  propagandist  attempts  to  enlist  and 
condition  them  too  young.  It  is  probably  equally  un- 
fair to  culturally  defer  the  decisions  too  late.  Loss  of 
one's  fundamental  religious  faith  is  more  of  a  wrench 
at  thirty  than  at  fifteen  simply  in  terms  of  the  number 
of  years  of  acceptance  which  have  accompanied  the 
belief.  A  sudden  knowledge  of  hitherto  unsuspected 
aspects  of  sex,  or  a  shattering  of  all  the  old  conventions 
concerning  sex  behaviour,  is  more  difficult  just  in  terms 
of  the  strength  of  the  old  attitudes.  Furthermore,  in 
practical  terms,  such  schemes  would  be  as  they  are  now, 
merely  local,  one  state  legislating  against  evolution, 
another  against  birth  control,  or  one  religious  group 
segregating  its  unmarried  girls.  And  these  special 
local  movements  would  simply  unfit  groups  of  young 

[245] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

people  for  competing  happily  with  children  who  had 
been  permitted  to  make  their  choices  earlier.     Such  an 
educational  scheme,  in  addition  to  being  almost  impos- 
sible of  execution,  would  be  a  step  backward  and  would 
only  beg  the  question. 
|/     Instead,  we  must  turn  all  of  our  educational  efforts 
,1  to  training  our  children  for  the  choices  which  will  con- 
■]  front  them.     Education,  in  the  home  even  more  than 
at  school,  instead  of  being  a  special  pleading  for  one 
regime,  a  desperate  attempt  to  form   one  particular 
habit  of  mind  which  will  withstand  all  outside  influ- 
ences, must  be  a  preparation  for  those  very  influences. 
Such  an  education  must  give  far  more  attention  to 
mental  and  physical  hygiene  than  it  has  given  hitherto. 
The  child  who  is  to  choose  wisely  must  be  healthy  in 
mind  and  body,  handicapped  in  no  preventable  fashion. 
^And  even  more  importantly,  this  child  of  the  future 
/  must  have  an  open  mind.     The  home  must  cease  to 
1   plead  an  ethical  cause  or  a  religious  belief  with  smiles 
Uor  frowns,  caresses  or  threats.     The  children  must  be 
/taught  how  to  think,  not  what  to  think.     And  because 
i  /  old  errors  die  slowly,  they  must  be  taught  tolerance, 
/    just  as  to-day  they  are  taught  intolerance.    They  must 
/     be  taught  that  many  ways  are  open  to  them,  no  one 
— Sanctioned  above  its  alternative,  and  that  upon  them 
and  upon  them  alone  lies  the  burden  of  choice.     Un- 
hampered by  prejudices,  unvexed  by  too  early  condi- 
tioning to  any  one  standard,  they  must  come  clear-eyed 
to  the  choices  which  lie  before  them. 

[246] 


EDUCATION  FOR  CHOICE 

For  it  must  be  realised  by  any_  studerit  i)f  civilisa-tion . 

that  we  pay  heavily  for  our  heterogeneous,  rapidly  - 

changing  civilisation  j  we  pay  in  high  proportions_  of ^/ 

crime  and  delinquency,  we  pay  in  the  conflicts  of  youth, 
we  pay  in  an  ever-increasing  number  of  neuroses,  we 
pay  in  the  lack  of  a  coherent  tradition  without  which 
the  development  of  art  is  sadly  handicapped.  In  such 
a  list  of  "prices,  'we  must  count  our  gains  carefully,  not 
to  be  discouraged.  And  chief  among  our  gains  must 
be  reckoned  this  possibility  of  choice,  the  recognition  of 
many  possible  ways  of  life,  where  other  civilisations 
have  recognised  only  one.  Where  other  civilisations 
give  a  satisfactory  outlet  to  only  one  temperamental 
type,  be  he  mystic  or  soldier,  business  man  or  artist,  a 
civilisation  in  which  there  are  many  standards  ofFers  a 
possibility  of  satisfactory  adjustment  to  individuals  of 
many  different  temperamental  types,  of  diverse  gifts 
and  varying  interests. 

At  the  present  time  we  live  in  a  period  of  transition. 
We  have  many  standards  but  we  still  believe  that  only 
one  standard  can  be  the  right  one.  We  present  to  our 
children  the  picture  of  a  battle-field  where  each  group 
is  fully  armoured  in  a  conviction  of  the  righteousness 
of  its  cause.  And  each  of  these  groups  make  forays 
among  the  next  generation.  But  it  is  unthinkable  that 
a  final  recognition  of  the  great  number  of  ways  in 
which  man,  during  the  course  of  history  and  at  the 
present  time,  is  solving  the  problems  of  life,  should 
not  bring  with  it  in  turn  the  downfall  of  our  belief  in 

[247] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

a  single  standard.  And  when  no  one  group  claims 
ethical  sanction  for  its  customs,  and  each  group  wel- 
comes to  its  midst  only  those  who  are  temperamentally 
fitted  for  membership,  then  we  shall  have  realised  the 
high  point  of  individual  choice  and  universal  tolera- 
tion which  a  heterogeneous  culture  and  a  heterogeneous 
culture  alone  can  attain.  Samoa  knows  but  one  way  of 
life  and  teaches  it  to  her  children.  Will  we,  who  have 
the  knowledge  of  many  ways,  leave  our  children  free 
to  choose  among  them? 


[248] 


APPENDIX  I 

NOTES    TO    CHAPTERS 

CHAPTER    IV 
Pages  43  to  45. 

In  the  Samoan  classification  of  relatives  two  principles,  sex 
and  age,  are  of  the  most  primary  importance.  Relationship 
terms  are  never  used  as  terms  of  address,  a  name  or  nickname 
being  used  even  to  father  or  mother.  Relatives  of  the  same 
age  or  within  a  year  or  two  younger  to  five  or  ten  years  older 
are  classified  as  of  the  speaker's  generation,  and  of  the  same 
sex  or  of  the  opposite  sex.  Thus  a  girl  will  call  her  sister, 
her  aunt,  her  niece,  and  her  female  cousin  who  are  nearly  of 
the  same  age,  usoy  and  a  boy  will  do  the  same  for  his  brother, 
uncle,  nephew,  or  male  cousin.  For  relationships  between 
siblings  of  opposite  sex  there  are  two  terms,  tuafafine  and 
tuaganey  female  relative  of  the  same  age  group  of  a  male,  and 
male  relative  of  the  same  age  group  of  a  female.  (The  term 
uso  has  no  such  subdivisions.) 

The  next  most  important  term  is  applied  to  younger  rela- 
tives of  either  sex,  the  word  tet.  Whether  a  child  is  so  classi- 
fied by  an  older  relative  depends  not  so  much  on  how  many 
years  younger  the  child  may  be,  but  rather  on  the  amount  of 
care  that  the  elder  has  taken  of  it.  So  a  girl  will  call  a  cousin 
two  years  younger  than  herself  her  teiy  if  she  has  lived  near  by, 
but  an  equally  youthful  cousin  who  has  grown  up  in  a  distant 
village  until  both  are  grown  will  be  called  uso.  It  is  notable 
that  there  is  no  term  for  elder  relative.  The  terms  usoy  tufa- 
fine  and  tuagane  all  carry  the  feeling  of  contemporaneousness, 

[249] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

and  if  it  is  necessary  to  specify  seniority,  a  qualifying  adjective 
must  be  used. 

Tamay  the  term  for  father,  is  applied  also  to  the  matai  of 
a  household,  to  an  uncle  or  older  cousin  with  whose  authority 
a  younger  person  comes  into  frequent  contact  and  also  to  a 
much  older  brother  who  in  feeling  is  classed  with  the  parent 
generation.  Tina  is  used  only  a  little  less  loosely  for  the 
mother,  aunts  resident  in  the  household,  the  wife  of  the  matai 
and  only  very  occasionally  for  an  older  sister. 

A  distinction  is  also  made  in  terminology  between  men's 
terms  and  women's  terms  for  the  children.  A  woman  will 
say  tama  (modified  by  the  addition  of  the  suffixes  tane  and 
fa  fine  y  male  and  female)  and  a  man  will  say  ataliiy  son  and 
afafinCy  daughter.  Thus  a  woman  will  say,  "Losa  is  my 
tama"  specifying  her  sex  only  when  necessary.  But  Losa's 
father  will  speak  of  Losa  as  his  afafine.  The  same  usage  is 
followed  in  speaking  to  a  man  or  to  a  woman  of  a  child.  All 
of  these  terms  are  further  modified  by  the  addition  of  the 
word,  moniy  real,  when  a  blood  sister  or  blood  father  or 
mother  is  meant.  The  elders  of  the  household  are  called 
roughly  matuay  and  a  grandparent  is  usually  referred  to  as  the 
toa^inuy  the  "old  man"  or  olamatuay  "old  woman,"  adding 
an  explanatory  clause  if  necessary.  All  other  relatives  are 
described  by  the  use  of  relative  clauses,  "the  sister  of  the  hus- 
band of  the  sister  of  my  mother,"  "the  brother  of  the  wife 
of  my  brother,"  etc.  There  are  no  special  terms  for  the  in- 
law group. 

CHAPTER   V 

Neighbourhood  Maps 

Pages  60  to  65. 

For  the  sake  of  convenience  the  households  were  numbered 
in  sequence  from  one  end  of  each  village  to  the  other.     The 

[250] 


APPENDIX  I 

houses  did  not  stretch  in  a  straight  line  along  the  beach,  but 
were  located  so  unevenly  that  occasionally  one  house  was  di- 
rectly behind  another.  A  schematic  linear  representation  will, 
however,  be  sufficient  to  show  the  effect  of  location  in  the  for- 
mation of  neighbourhood  groups. 

VILLAGE    I 


(The  name  of  the  girl  will  be  placed  under  the  number  of 
the  household.  Adolescent  girls'  names  in  capitals,  girls'  just 
reaching  puberty  in  lower  case  and  the  pre-adolescent  children 
in  italics.) 


I 

2           3 
Vala 

4 

LlTA 

5          6 

Maliu .  Lust 
Pola 

7 
Fitu 

Ula 

8 
Lia 

9 
Fiva 
Luna 

10 

II          12 

13 

14            15 
Lota    Pala 
Vi 

Pels 

16 

17 
Tuna 

18 

19 

20        21        22 

LosA 

23 

24                  25 
Tulipa      Masina 

26 

Mtna 

Sona 

27 
Tina 

28 

TiTA 
Sina 
Elisa 

29             30 

Aso       Selu 
Suna       Tol( 

3 
3 

I         32 

33 

VILLAGE    II 

Siufaga 

(Household  38  in  Siufaga  is  adjacent  to  household  i  in 
Luma.  The  two  villages  are  geographically  continuous  but 
socially  they  are  separate  units.) 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 


123456 
Vina  Namu  Lita  * 

TOLO  TOLU 

Lusina 


7        8 
Tulima 


II        12  13 

Tatala 

21  22         23 

Pulona  Ipu  Tasi 


31        32       33 

LuA    Simina 


14       15         16         17       il 
Lilina  Tino    Mala 


24       25 


26 
Tua 


27       28 


10 


19         20 

Lola  * 

29       30 
Timu 
Meta 


34      35       36      37 


38 

Fala 
So  lata 


VILLAGE    III 

Faleasao 


(Faleasao  was  separated  from  Luma  by  a  high  cliff  which 
jutted  out  into  the  sea  and  made  it  necessary  to  take  an  inland 
trail  to  get  from  one  seaside  village  to  the  other.  This  was 
about  a  twenty-minute  walk  from  Tau.  Faleasao  children 
were  looked  upon  with  much  greater  hostility  and  suspicion 
than  that  which  the  children  of  Luma  and  Siufaga  showed  to 
each  other.  The  pre-adolescent  children  from  this  village  are 
not  discussed  by  name  and  will  be  indicated  by  an  x.) 


I 

23456 

XXX     Talo    Ela 

X             X 

7 
Leta 

8 

9        10 

II 

12      13      14         15               16 

17 

18 

19      20 

X 

X                MiNA                    MOANA 

Sala 

X     Mata 

X 

X             X 

LUINA 

*  Girls  to  whom  a  change  of  residence  made  important  differences, 
see  Chap.  XI,  "The  Girl  in  Conflict." 

[252] 


APPENDIX  I 

21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29 

CHAPTER    IX 

Pages  123  to  125. 

The  first  person  singular  of  the  verb  "to  know,"  used  in 
the  negative,  has  two  forms: 

Ta  ilo   (Contraction  of  Ta  te  le  iloa) 

I         euphonic  neg.         know 
particle 
and 

Ua  le  iloa  a'u 

Pres.  neg.  know  I 

Part. 

The  former  of  these  expressions  has  a  very  different  mean- 
ing from  the  latter  although  linguistically  they  represent  op- 
tional syntactic  forms,  the  second  being  literally,  "I  do  not 
know,"  while  the  first  can  best  be  rendered  by  the  slang  phrase, 
"Search  me."  This  "Search  me"  carries  no  implication  of  lack 
of  actual  knowledge  or  information  about  the  subject  in  ques- 
tion but  is  merely  an  indication  either  of  lack  of  interest  or 
unwillingness  to  explain.  That  the  Samoans  feel  this  distinc- 
tion very  clearly  is  shown  by  the  frequent  use  of  both  forms 
in  the  same  sentence:  Ta  ilo  ua  le  iloa  a^u.  "Search  me,  I 
don't  know." 

Page  126. 

Sample  Character  Sketches  Given  of  Members  of 
Their  Households  by  Adolescent  Girls 

(Literal  translations  from  dictated  texts) 

I 

He  is  an  untitled  man.  He  works  hard  on  the  plantation. 
He  is  tall,  thin  and  dark-skinned.     He  is  not  easily  angered. 

[253] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

He  goes  to  work  and  comes  again  at  night.  He  is  a  police- 
man. He  does  work  for  the  government.  He  is  not  filled 
with  unwillingness.  He  is  attractive  looking.  He  is  not  mar- 
ried. 

II 

She  is  an  old  woman.  She  is  very  old.  She  is  weak.  She 
is  not  able  to  work.  She  can  only  remain  in  the  house.  Her 
hair  is  black.  She  is  fat.  She  has  elephantiasis  in  one  leg. 
She  has  no  teeth.  She  is  not  irritable.  She  does  not  hate.  She 
is  clever  at  weaving  mats,  fishing  baskets  and  food  trays. 

Ill 

She  is  strong  and  able  to  work.  She  goes  inland.  She 
weeds  and  makes  the  oven  and  picks  breadfruit  and  gathers 
paper  mulberry  bark.  She  is  kind.  She  is  of  good  conduct. 
She  is  clever  at  weaving  baskets  and  mats  and  fine  mats  and 
food  trays,  and  painting  tapa  cloth  and  scraping  and  pounding 
and  pasting  paper  mulberry  bark.  She  is  short,  black-haired 
and  dark-skinned.  She  is  fat.  She  is  good.  If  any  one  passes 
by  she  is  kindly  disposed  towards  them  and  calls  out,  "Po'o 
fea  'e  te  maliu  i  ai?"  (a  most  courteous  way  of  asking, 
"Where  are  you  going?") 

IV 

She  is  fat.  She  has  long  hair.  She  is  dark-skinned.  She  is 
blind  in  one  eye.  She  is  of  good  behaviour.  She  is  clever  at 
weeding  taro  and  weaving  floor  mats  and  fine  mats.  She  is 
short.  She  has  borne  children.  There  is  a  baby.  She  remains 
in  the  house  on  some  days  and  on  other  days  she  goes  inland. 
She  also  knows  how  to  weave  baskets. 


He  is  a  boy.     His  skin  is  dark.     So  is  his  hair.     He  goes  to 
the  bush  to  work.      He  works  on  the  taro  plantation.      He 

[254] 


APPENDIX  I 

likes  every  one.  He  is  clever  at  weaving  baskets.  He  sings 
in  the  choir  of  the  young  men  on  Sunday.  He  likes  very 
much  to  consort  with  the  girls.  He  was  expelled  from  the 
pastor's  house. 

VI 

Portrait  of  herself 

I  am  a  girl.  I  am  short.  I  have  long  hair.  I  love  my 
sisters  and  all  the  people.  I  know  how  to  weave  baskets  and 
fishing  baskets  and  how  to  prepare  paper  mulberry  bark.  I 
live  in  the  house  of  the  pastor. 

vn 

He  is  a  man.  He  is  strong.  He  goes  inland  and  works 
upon  the  plantation  of  his  relatives.  He  goes  fishing.  He 
goes  to  gather  cocoanuts  and  breadfruit  and  cooking  leaves 
and  makes  the  oven.  He  is  tall.  He  is  dark-skinned.  He  is 
rather  fat.  His  hair  is  short.  He  is  clever  at  weaving  bas- 
kets. He  braids  the  palm  leaf  thatching  mats  for  the  house.* 
He  is  also  clever  at  house-building.  He  is  of  good  conduct 
and  has  a  loving  countenance. 

VIII 

She  is  a  woman.  She  can't  work  hard  enough  (to  suit  her- 
self). She  is  also  clever  at  weaving  baskets  and  fine  mats  and 
at  bark  cloth  making.  She  also  makes  the  ovens  and  clears 
away  the  rubbish  around  the  house.  She  keeps  her  house  in 
fine  condition.  She  makes  the  fire.  She  smokes.  She  goes 
fishing  and  gets  octopuses  and  tu'itu'i  (sea  eggs)  and  comes 
back  and  eats  them  raw.  She  is  kind-hearted  and  of  loving 
countenance.    She  is  never  angry.    She  also  loves  her  children. 

*  Women's  work. 

[255] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

IX 

She  is  a  woman.     She  has  a  son, is  his  name.     She 

is  lazy.  She  is  tall.  She  is  thin.  Her  hair  is  long.  She  is 
clever  at  weaving  baskets,  making  bark  cloth  and  weaving  fine 
mats.  Her  husband  is  dead.  She  does  not  laugh  often.  She 
stays  in  the  house  some  days  and  other  days  she  goes  inland. 
She  keeps  everything  clean.  She  lives  well  upon  bananas.  She 
has  a  loving  face.  She  is  not  easily  out  of  temper.  She  makes 
the  oven. 

X 

She  is  the  daughter  of  .     She  is  a  little  girl  about 

my  age.  She  is  also  clever  at  weaving  baskets  and  mats  and 
fine  mats  and  blinds  and  floor  mats.  She  is  good  in  school. 
She  also  goes  to  get  leaves  and  breadfruit.  She  also  goes  fish- 
ing when  the  tide  is  out.  She  gets  crabs  and  jelly  fish.  She 
is  very  loving.  She  does  not  eat  up  all  her  food  if  others  ask 
her  for  it.  She  shows  a  loving  face  to  all  who  come  to  her 
house.     She  also  spreads  food  for  all  visitors. 

XI 

Portrait  of  herself 

I  am  clever  at  weaving  mats  and  fine  mats  and  baskets  and 
blinds  and  floor  mats.  I  go  and  carry  water  for  all  of  my 
household  to  drink  and  for  others  also.  I  go  and  gather  ba- 
nanas and  breadfruit  and  leaves  and  make  the  oven  with  my 
sisters.  Then  we  (herself  and  her  sisters)  go  fishing  to- 
gether and  then  it  is  night. 

CHAPTER    X 

Pages  132  to  133. 

The  children  of  this  age  already  show  a  very  curious  exam- 
ple of  a  phonetic  self-consciousness  in  which  they  are  almost 

[256] 


APPENDIX  I 

as  acute  and  discriminating  as  their  elders.  When  the  mis- 
sionaries reduced  the  language  to  writing,  there  was  no  k  in 
the  language,  the  k  positions  in  otlier  Polynesian  dialects  being 
filled  in  Samoan  either  with  a  ^  or  a  glottal  stop.  Soon  after 
the  printing  of  the  Bible,  and  the  standardisation  of  Samoan 
spelling,  greater  contact  with  Tonga  introduced  the  k  into  the 
spoken  language  of  Savai'i  and  Upolu,  displacing  the  ty  but 
not  replacing  the  glottal  stop.  Slowly  this  intrusive  usage 
spread  eastward  over  Samoa,  the  missionaries  who  controlled 
the  schools  and  the  printing  press  fighting  a  dogged  and  losing 
battle  with  the  less  musical  k.  To-day  the  t  is  the  sound  used 
in  the  speech  of  the  educated  and  in  the  church,  still  conven- 
tionally retained  in  all  spelling  and  used  in  speeches  and  on 
occasions  demanding  formality.  The  Manu'a  children  who 
had  never  been  to  the  missionary  boarding  schools,  used  the  k 
entirely.  But  they  had  heard  the  t  in  church  and  at  school 
and  were  sufficiently  conscious  of  the  difference  to  rebuke  me 
immediately  if  I  slipped  into  the  colloquial  ky  which  was  their 
only  speech  habit,  uttering  the  t  sound  for  perhaps  the  first 
time  in  their  lives  to  illustrate  the  correct  pronunciation  from 
which  I,  who  was  ostensibly  learning  to  speak  correctly,  must 
not  deviate.  Such  an  ability  to  disassociate  the  sound  used 
from  the  sound  heard  is  remarkable  in  such  very  young  chil- 
dren and  indeed  remarkable  in  any  person  who  is  not  lin- 
guistically sophisticated. 

CHAPTER    XI 

Pages  i6i  to  163. 

During  six  months  I  saw  six  girls  leave  the  pastor's  estab- 
lishment for  several  reasons:  Tasi,  because  her  mother  was 
ill  and  she,  that  rare  phenomenon,  the  eldest  in  a  biological 
household,  was  needed  at  home;  Tua,  because  she  had  come 
out  lowest  in  the  missionaries'  annual  examination  which  her 

[257] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

mother  attributed  to  favouritism  on  the  part  of  the  pastor; 
Luna,  because  her  stepmother,  whom  she  disliked,  left  her 
father  and  thus  made  her  home  more  attractive  and  because 
under  the  influence  of  a  promiscuous  older  cousin  she  began 
to  tire  of  the  society  of  younger  girls  and  take  an  interest  in 
love  affairs;  Lita,  because  her  father  ordered  her  home,  be- 
cause with  the  permission  of  the  pastor,  but  without  consult- 
ing her  family,  she  went  off  for  a  three  weeks'  visit  in  an- 
other island.  Going  home  for  Lita  involved  residence  in  the 
far  end  of  the  other  village,  necessitating  a  complete  change 
of  friends.  The  novelty  of  the  new  group  and  new  interests 
kept  her  from  in  any  way  chafing  at  the  change.  Sala,  a 
stupid  idle  girl,  had  eloped  from  the  household  of  the  pastor. 


[258] 


APPENDIX  II 

METHODOLOGY    OF    THIS    STUDY 

It  is  impossible  to  present  a  single  and  unified  picture  of 
the  adolescent  girl  in  Samoa  and  at  the  same  time  to  answer 
most  satisfactorily  the  various  kinds  of  questions  which  such 
a  study  will  be  expected  to  answer.  For  the  ethnologist  in 
search  of  data  upon  the  usages  and  rites  connected  with  ado- 
lescence it  is  necessary  to  include  descriptions  of  customs  which 
have  fallen  into  partial  decay  under  the  impact  of  western 
propaganda  and  foreign  example.  Traditional  observances 
and  attitudes  are  also  important  in  the  study  of  the  adolescent 
girl  in  present-day  Samoa  because  they  still  form  a  large  part 
of  the  thought  pattern  of  her  parents,  even  if  they  are  no 
longer  given  concrete  expression  in  the  girl's  cultural  life. 
But  this  double  necessity  of  describing  not  only  the  present 
environment  and  the  girl's  reaction  to  it,  but  also  of  inter- 
polating occasionally  some  description  of  the  more  rigid  cul- 
tural milieu  of  her  mother's  girlhood,  mars  to  some  extent 
the  unity  of  the  study. 

The  detailed  observations  were  all  made  upon  a  group  of 
girls  living  in  three  practically  contiguous  villages  on  one 
coast  of  the  island  of  Tau.  The  data  upon  the  ceremonial 
usages  surrounding  birth,  adolescence  and  marriage  were  gath- 
ered from  all  of  the  seven  villages  in  the  Manu'a  Archipelago. 

The  method  of  approach  is  based  upon  the  assumption  that 
a  detailed  intensive  investigation  will  be  of  more  value  than 
a  more  diffused  and  general  study  based  upon  a  less  accurate 
knowledge  of  a  greater  number  of  individuals.  Dr.  Van 
Waters'   study   of    The   Adolescent    Girl   Among   Primitive 

[259] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

Peoples  has  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  an  investigation  based 
upon  the  merely  external  observations  of  the  ethnologist  vv^ho 
is  giving  a  standardised  description  of  a  primitive  culture.  We 
have  a  huge  mass  of  general  descriptive  material  without  the 
detailed  observations  and  the  individual  cases  in  the  light  of 
which  it  would  be  possible  to  interpret  it. 

The  writer  therefore  chose  to  work  in  one  small  locality, 
in  a  group  numbering  only  six  hundred  people,  and  spend  six 
months  accumulating  an  intimate  and  detailed  knowledge  of 
all  the  adolescent  girls  in  this  community.  As  there  were 
only  sixty-eight  girls  between  the  ages  of  nine  and  twenty, 
quantitative  statements  are  practically  valueless  for  obvious 
reasons:  the  probable  error  of  the  group  is  too  large;  the  age 
classes  are  too  small,  etc.  The  only  point  at  which  quantita- 
tive statements  can  have  any  relevance  is  in  regard  to  the 
variability  within  the  group,  as  the  smaller  the  variability 
within  the  sample,  the  greater  the  general  validity  of  the 
results. 

Furthermore,  the  type  of  data  which  we  needed  is  not  of 
the  sort  which  lends  itself  readily  to  quantitative  treatment. 
The  reaction  of  the  girl  to  her  stepmother,  to  relatives  acting 
as  foster  parents,  to  her  younger  sister,  or  to  her  older  brother, 
— these  are  incommensurable  in  quantitative  terms.  As  the 
physician  and  the  psychiatrist  have  found  it  necessary  to  describe 
each  case  separately  and  to  use  their  cases  as  illumination  of  a 
thesis  rather  than  as  irrefutable  proof  such  as  it  is  possible  to 
adduce  in  the  physical  sciences,  so  the  student  of  the  more  in- 
tangible and  psychological  aspects  of  human  behaviour  is 
forced  to  illuminate  rather  than  demonstrate  a  thesis.  The 
composition  of  the  background  against  which  the  girl  acts  can 
be  described  in  accurate  and  general  terms,  but  her  reactions 
are  a  function  of  her  own  personality  and  cannot  be  described 
without  reference  to  it.  The  generalisations  are  based  upon 
a  careful  and  detailed  observation  of  a  small  group  of  sub- 

[260] 


APPENDIX  II 

jects.  These  results  will  be  illuminated  and  illustrated  by 
case  histories. 

The  conclusions  are  also  all  subject  to  the  limitation  of  the 
personal  equation.  They  are  the  judgments  of  one  individual 
upon  a  mass  of  data,  many  of  the  most  significant  aspects  of 
which  can,  by  their  very  nature,  be  known  only  to  herself. 
This  was  inevitable  and  it  can  only  be  claimed  in  extenuation 
that  as  the  personal  equation  was  held  absolutely  constant,  the 
different  parts  of  the  data  are  strictly  commensurable.  The 
judgment  on  the  reaction  of  Lola  to  her  uncle  and  of  Sona 
to  her  cousin  are  made  on  exactly  the  same  basis. 

Another  methodological  device  which  possibly  needs  expla- 
nation is  the  substitution  of  a  cross  sectional  study  for  a  linear 
one.  Twenty-eight  children  who  as  yet  showed  no  signs  of 
puberty,  fourteen  children  who  would  probably  mature  within 
the  next  year  or  year  and  a  half,  and  twenty-five  girls  who 
had  passed  puberty  within  the  last  four  years  but  were  not  yet 
classed  by  the  community  as  adults^  were  studied  in  detail. 
Less  intensive  observations  were  also  made  upon  the  very  little 
children  and  the  young  married  women.  Thus_jmethod^  of 
taking  cross  sections,  samples  of  individuals  at  different  periods 
jof  physical  development,  and  arguing  that  a^roup  in  an  earHer 
stage  jyilj_ljter_show„th^e__chajj.cteristics  which  appear  in  an- 
other group  at  a  later  stage,^s,  of  course,  inferior  to  a  linear 
Ijudyjnjwhichjhe  same  group  is  under  observatioxL^or  a  XLum- 
^er  of  years.  A  very  large  number  of  cases  has  usually  been 
the  only  acceptable  defence  of  such  a  procedure.  The  num- 
ber of  cases  included  in  this  investigation,  while  very  small 
in  comparison  with  the  numbers  mustered  by  any  student  of 
American  children,  is  nevertheless  a  fair-sized  sample  in  terms 
of  the  very  small  population  of  Samoa  (a  rough  eight  thou- 
sand in  all  four  islands  of  American  Samoa)  and  because  the 
only  selection  was  geographical.  It  may  further  be  argued 
that  the  almost  drastic  character  of  the  conclusions,  the  exceed- 

[261] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

ingly  few  exceptions  which  need  to  be  made,  further  validate 
the  size  of  the  sample.  The  adoption  of  the  cross  section 
method  was,  of  course,  a  matter  of  expediency,  but  the  results 
when  carefully  derived  from  a  fair  sample,  may  be  fairly 
compared  with  the  results  obtained  by  using  the  linear  method, 
when  the  same  subjects  are  under  observation  over  a  period  of 
years.  This  is  true  when  the  conclusions  to  be  drawn  are  gen- 
eral and  not  individual.  For  the  purposes  of  psychological 
theory,  it  is  sufficient  to  know  that  children  in  a  certain  society 
walk,  on  the  average,  at  twelve  months,  and  talk,  on  the  aver- 
age, at  fifteen  months.  For  the  purposes  of  the  diagnostician, 
it  is  necessary  to  know  that  John  walked  at  eighteen  months 
and  did  not  talk  until  twenty  months.  So,  for  general  theo- 
retical purposes,  it  is  enough  to  state  that  little  girls  just  past 
puberty  develop  a  shyness  and  lack  of  self-possession  in  the 
presence  of  boys,  but  if  we  are  to  understand  the  delinquency 
of  Mala,  it  is  necessary  to  know  that  she  prefers  the  company 
of  boys  to  that  of  girls  and  has  done  so  for  several  years. 

PARTICULAR    METHODS    USED 

The  description  of  the  cultural  background  was  obtained 
in  orthodox  fashion,  first  through  interviews  with  carefully 
chosen  informants,  followed  by  checking  up  their  statements 
with  other  informants  and  by  thq  use  of  many  examples  and 
test  cases.  With  a  few  unimportant"  exceptions  this  material 
was  obtained  in  the  Samoan  language  and  not  through  the 
medium  of  interpreters.  All  of  the  work  with  individuals 
was  done  in  the  native  language,  as  there  were  no  young  peo- 
ple on  the  island  who  spoke  English. 

Although  a  knowledge  of  the  entire  culture  was  essential 
for  the  accurate  evaluation  of  any  particular  individual's  be- 
haviour, a  detailed  description  will  be  given  only  of  those 
aspects  of  the  culture  which  are  immediately  relevant  to  the 

[262] 


APPENDIX  II 

problem  of  the  adolescent  girl.  For  example,  if  I  observe 
Pele  refuse  point  blank  to  carry  a  message  to  the  house  of  a 
relative,  it  is  important  to  know  whether  she  is  actuated  by 
stubbornness,  dislike  of  the  relative,  fear  of  the  dark,  or  fear 
of  the  ghost  which  lives  near  by  and  has  a  habit  of  jumping 
on  people's  backs.  But  to  the  reader  a  detailed  exposition  of 
the  names  and  habits  of  all  the  local  ghost  population  would 
be  of  little  assistance  in  the  appreciation  of  the  main  problem. 
So  all  descriptions  of  the  culture  which  are  not  immediately 
relevant  are  omitted  from  the  discussion  but  were  not  omitted 
from  the  original  investigation.  Their  irrelevancy  has,  there- 
fore, been  definitely  ascertained. 

The  knowledge  of  the  general  cultural  pattern  was  sup- 
plemented by  a  detailed  study  of  the  social  structure  of  the 
three  villages  under  consideration.  Each  household  was  ana- 
lysed from  the  standpoint  of  rank,  wealth,  location,  contiguity 
to  other  households,  relationship  to  other  households,  and  the 
age,  sex,  relationship,  marital  status,  number  of  children, 
former  residence,  etc.,  of  each  individual  in  the  household. 
This  material  furnished  a  general  descriptive  basis  for  a  fur- 
ther and  more  careful  analysis  of  the  households  of  the  sub- 
jects, and  also  provided  a  check  on  the  origin  of  feuds  or  al- 
liances between  individuals,  the  use  of  relationship  terms,  etc. 
Each  child  was  thus  studied  against  a  background  which  was 
known  in  detail. 

A  further  mass  of  detailed  information  was  obtained  about 
the  subjects:  approximate  age  (actual  age  can  never  be  deter- 
mined in  Samoa),  order  of  birth,  numbers  of  brothers  and 
sisters,  who  were  older  and  younger  than  the  subject,  number 
of  marriages  of  each  parent,  patrilocal  and  matrilocal  resi- 
dence, years  spent  in  the  pastor's  school  and  in  the  government 
school  and  achievement  there,  whether  the  child  had  ever  been 
out  of  the  village  or  oif  the  island,  sex  experience,  etc.  The 
children  were  also  given  a  makeshift  intelligence  test,  colour- 

[263] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

naming,  rote  memory,  opposites,  substitution,  ball  and  field, 
and  picture  interpretation.  These  tests  were  all  given  in 
Samoan;  standardisation  was,  of  course,  impossible  and  ages 
were  known  only  relatively;  they  were  mainly  useful  in  assist- 
ing me  in  placing  the  child  within  her  group,  and  have  no 
value  for  comparative  purposes.  The  results  of  the  tests  did 
indicate,  however,  a  very  low  variability  within  the  group. 
The  tests  were  supplemented  by  a  questionnaire  which  was  not 
administered  formally  but  filled  in  by  random  questioning 
from  time  to  time.  This  questionnaire  gave  a  measure  of 
their  industrial  knowledge,  the  extent  to  which  they  partici- 
pated in  the  lore  of  the  community,  of  the  degree  to  which 
they  had  absorbed  European  teaching  in  matters  like  telling 
time,  reading  the  calendar,  and  also  of  the  extent  to  which 
they  had  participated  in  or  witnessed  scenes  of  death,  birth, 
miscarriage,  etc. 

But  this  quantitative  data  represents  the  barest  skeleton  of 
the  material  which  was  gathered  through  months  of  observa- 
tion of  the  individuals  and  of  groups,  alone,  in  their  house- 
holds, and  at  play.  From  these  observations,  the  bulk  of  the 
conclusions  are  drawn  concerning  the  attitudes  of  the  children 
towards  their  families  and  towards  each  other,  their  religious 
interests  or  the  lack  of  them,  and  the  details  of  their  sex  lives. 
This  information  cannot  be  reduced  to  tables  or  to  statistical 
statements.  Naturally  in  many  cases  it  was  not  as  full  as  in 
others.  In  some  cases  it  was  necessary  to  pursue  a  more  exten- 
sive enquiry  in  order  to  understand  some  baffling  aspect  of  the 
child's  behaviour.  In  all  cases  the  investigation  was  pursued 
iintil  I  felt  that  I  understood  the  girl's  motivation  and  the 
degree  to  which  her  family  group  and  affiliation  in  her  age 
group  explained  her  attitudes. 

The  existence  of  the  pastor's  boarding-school  for  girls  past 
puberty  provided  me  with  a  rough  control  group.  These  girls 
were  so  severely  watched  that  heterosexual  activities  were  im- 

[264] 


APPENDIX  II 

possible;  they  were  grouped  together  with  other  girls  of  the 
sam  age  regardless  of  relationship;  they  ved  a  more  ordered 
and  regular  life  than  the  girls  who  remained  in  their  house- 
holds. The  ways  in  which  they  differed  from  other  girls  of 
the  same  age  and  more  resembled  European  girls  of  the  same 
age  follow  with  surprising  accuracy  the  lines  suggested  by  the 
specific  differences  in  environment.  However,  as  they  lived 
part  of  the  time  at  home,  the  environmental  break  was  not 
complete  and  their  value  as  a  control  group  is  strictly  limited. 


[265] 


^ 


APPENDIX  III 

SAMOAN   CIVILISATION   AS   IT   IS  TO-DAY 

The  scene  of  this  study  was  the  little  island  of  Tau.  Along 
one  coast  of  the  island,  which  rises  precipitately  to  a  mountain 
peak  in  the  centre,  cluster  three  little  villages,  Luma  and 
Siufaga,  side  by  side,  and  Faleasao,  half  a  mile  away.  On 
the  other  end  of  the  island  is  the  isolated  village  of  Fitiuta, 
separated  from  the  other  three  villages  by  a  long  and  arduous 
trail.  Many  of  the  people  from  the  other  villages  have  never 
been  to  Fitiuta,  eight  miles  away.  Twelve  miles  across  the 
open  sea  are  the  two  islands  of  Ofu  and  Olesega,  which  with 
Taij,  make  up  the  Manu'a  Archipelago,  the  most  primitive 
part  of  Samoa.  Journeys  in  slender  outrigger  canoes  from 
one  of  these  three  little  islands  to  another  are  frequent,  and 
the  inhabitants  of  Manu'a  think  of  themselves  as  a  unit  as 
over  against  the  inhabitants  of  Tutuila,  the  large  island  where 
the  Naval  Station  is  situated.  The  three  islands  have  a  popu- 
lation of  a  little  over  two  thousand  people,  with  constant 
visiting,  inter-marrying,  adoption  going  on  between  the  seven 
villages  of  the  Archipelago. 

The  natives  still  live  in  their  beehive-shaped  houses  with 
floors  of  coral  rubble,  no  walls  except  perishable  woven  blinds 
which  are  lowered  in  bad  weather,  and  a  roof  of  sugar-cane 
thatch  over  which  it  is  necessary  to  bind  palm  branches  in 
every  storm.  They  have  substituted  cotton  cloth  for  their 
laboriously  manufactured  bark  cloth  for  use  as  everyday 
clothing,  native  costume  being  reserved  for  ceremonial  occa- 
sions. But  the  men  content  themselves  with  a  wide  cotton 
loin  cloth,  the  lavalava,  fastened  at  the  waist  with  a  dexterous 

[266] 


APPENDIX  III 

twist  of  the  material.  This  costume  permits  a  little  of  the 
tattooing  which  covers  their  bodies  from  knee  to  the  small  of 
the  back,  to  appear  above  and  below  the  folds  of  the  lavalava. 
Tattooing  has  been  taboo  on  Manu'a  for  two  generations, 
so  only  a  part  of  the  population  have  made  the  necessary  jour- 
ney to  another  island  in  search  of  a  tattooer.  Women  wear  a 
longer  lavalava  and  a  short  cotton  dress  falling  to  their  knees. 
Both  sexes  go  barefoot  and  hats  are  worn  only  to  Church,  on 
which  occasions  the  men  don  white  shirts  and  white  coats, 
ingeniously  tailored  by  the  native  women  in  imitation  of  Palm 
Beach  coats  which  have  fallen  into  their  hands.  The  women's 
tattooing  is  much  sparser  than  the  men's,  a  mere  matter  of 
dots  and  crosses  on  arms,  hands,  and  thighs.  Garlands  of 
flowers,  flowers  in  the  hair,  and  flowers  twisted  about  the 
ankles,  serve  to  relieve  the  drabness  of  the  faded  cotton  cloth- 
ing, and  on  gala  days,  beautifully  patterned  bark  cloth,  fine 
mats,  gaily  bordered  with  red  parrot  feathers,  headdresses  of 
human  hair  decorated  with  plumes  and  feathers,  recall  the 
more  picturesque  attire  of  pre-Christian  days. 

Sewing-machines  have  been  in  use  for  many  years,  although 
the  natives  are  still  dependent  upon  some  deft-handed  sailor 
for  repairs.  Scissors  have  also  been  added  to  the  household 
equipment,  but  wherever  possible  a  Samoan  woman  still  uses 
her  teeth  or  a  piece  of  bamboo.  At  the  Missionary  boarding- 
schools  a  few  of  the  women  have  learned  to  crochet  and 
embroider,  using  their  skill  particularly  to  ornament  the 
plump,  hard  pillows  which  are  rapidly  displacing  the  little 
bamboo  head  rests.  Sheets  of  white  cotton  have  taken  the 
place  of  sheets  of  firmly  woven  mats  or  of  bark  cloth.  Mos- 
quito nets  of  cotton  netting  make  a  native  house  much  more 
endurable  than  must  have  been  the  case  when  bark  cloth  tents 
were  the  only  defence  against  insects.  The  netting  is  sus- 
pended at  night  from  stout  cords  hung  across  the  house,  and 
the  edges  weighted  down  with  stones,  so  that  prowling  dogs, 

[267] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

pigs,  and  chickens  wander  through  the  house  at  will  without 
disturbing  the  sleepers. 

Agate  buckets  share  with  hollowed  cocoanut  shells  the  work 
of  bringing  water  from  the  springs  and  from  the  sea,  and 
a  few  china  cups  and  glasses  co-operate  with  the  cocoanut 
drinking  cups.  Many  households  have  an  iron  cook  pot  in 
which  they  can  boil  liquids  in  preference  to  the  older  method 
of  dropping  red  hot  stones  into  a  wooden  vessel  containing  the 
liquid  to  be  heated.  Kerosene  lamps  and  lanterns  are  used 
extensively;  the  old  candle-nut  clusters  and  cocoanut  oil 
lamps  being  reinstated  only  in  times  of  great  scarcity  when 
they  cannot  aiford  to  purchase  kerosene.  Tobacco  is  a  much- 
prized  luxury;  the  Samoans  have  learned  to  grow  it,  but  im- 
ported varieties  are  very  much  preferred  to  their  own. 

Outside  the  household  the  changes  wrought  by  the  intro- 
duction of  European  articles  are  very  slight.  The  native  uses 
an  iron  knife  to  cut  his  copra  and  an  iron  adze  blade  in  place 
of  the  old  stone  one.  But  he  still  binds  the  rafters  of  his 
house  together  with  cinet  and  sews  the  parts  of  his  fishing 
canoes  together.  The  building  of  large  canoes  has  been  aban- 
doned. Only  small  canoes  for  fishing  are  built  now,  and  for 
hauling  supplies  over  the  reef  the  natives  build  keeled  row- 
boats.  Only  short  voyages  are  made  in  small  canoes  and  row- 
boats,  and  the  natives  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  Naval  ship 
to  do  their  travelling.  The  government  buys  the  copra  and 
with  the  money  so  obtained  the  Samoans  buy  cloth,  thread, 
kerosene,  soap,  matches,  knives,  belts,  and  tobacco,  pay  their 
taxes  (levied  on  every  man  over  a  certain  height  as  age  is  an 
indeterminate  matter),  and  support  the  church. 

And  yet,  while  the  Samoans  use  these  products  of  a  more 
complex  civilisation,  they  are  not  dependent  upon  them.  With 
the  exception  of  making  and  using  stone  tools,  it  is  probably 
safe  to  say  that  none  of  the  native  arts  have  been  lost.  The 
women  all  make  bark  cloth  and  weave  fine  mats.    Parturition 

[268] 


APPENDIX  III 

still  takes  place  on  a  piece  of  bark  cloth,  the  umbilical  cord  is 
cut  with  a  piece  of  bamboo,  and  the  new  baby  is  wrapped  in 
a  specially  prepared  piece  of  white  bark  cloth.  If  soap  can- 
not be  obtained,  the  wild  orange  provides  a  frothy  substitute. 
The  men  still  manufacture  their  own  nets,  make  their  own 
hooks,  weave  their  own  eel  traps.  And  although  they  use 
matches  when  they  can  get  them,  they  have  not  lost  the  art 
of  converting  a  carrying  stick  into  a  fire  plow  at  a  moment's 
notice. 

Perhaps  most  important  of  all  is  the  fact  that  they  still 
depend  entirely  upon  their  own  foods,  planted  with  a  sharp- 
ened pole  in  their  own  plantations.  Breadfruit,  bananas,  taro, 
yams,  and  cocoanuts  form  a  substantial  and  monotonous  ac- 
companiment for  the  fish,  shell  fish,  land  crabs,  and  occasional 
pigs  and  chickens.  The  food  is  carried  down  to  the  village 
in  baskets,  freshly  woven  from  palm  leaves.  The  cocoanuts 
are  grated  on  the  end  of  a  wooden  "horse,"  pointed  with 
shell  or  iron;  the  breadfruit  and  taro  are  supported  on  a 
short  stake,  tufted  with  cocoanut  husk,  and  the  rind  is  grated 
off  with  a  piece  of  cocoanut  shell.  The  green  bananas  are 
skinned  with  a  bamboo  knife.  The  whole  amount  of  food 
for  a  family  of  fifteen  or  twenty  for  two  or  three  days  is 
cooked  at  once  in  a  large  circular  pit  of  stones.  These  are 
iirst  heated  to  white  heat;  the  ashes  are  then  raked  away;  the 
food  placed  on  the  stones  and  the  oven  covered  with  green 
leaves,  under  which  the  food  is  baked  thoroughly.  Cooking 
over,  the  food  is  stored  in  baskets  which  are  hung  up  inside 
the  main  house.  It  is  served  on  palm  leaf  platters,  garnished 
with  a  fresh  banana  leaf.  Fingers  are  the  only  knives  and 
forks,  and  a  wooden  finger  bowl  is  passed  ceremoniously  about 
at  the  end  of  the  meal. 

Furniture,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  chests  and  cupboards, 
has  not  invaded  the  house.  All  life  goes  on  on  the  floor. 
Speaking  on  one's  feet  within  the  house  is  still  an  unforgivable 

[269] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMCA 

breach  of  etiquette,  and  the  visitor  must  learn  to  sit  cross- 
legged  for  hours  without  murmuring. 

The  Samoans  have  been  Christian  for  almost  a  hundred 
years.  With  the  exception  of  a  small  number  of  Catholics 
and  Mormons,  all  the  natives  of  American  Samoa  are  ad- 
herents of  the  London  Missionary  Society,  known  in  Samoa 
as  the  "Church  of  Tahiti,"  from  its  local  origin.  The  Con- 
gregationalist  missionaries  have  been  exceedingly  successful  in 
adapting  the  stern  doctrine  and  sterner  ethics  of  a  British 
Protestant  sect  to  the  widely  divergent  attitudes  of  a  group 
of  South  Sea  islanders.  In  the  Missionary  boarding-schools 
they  have  trained  many  boys  as  native  pastors  and  as  mission- 
aries for  other  islands,  and  many  girls  to  be  the  pastors'  wives. 
The  pastor's  house  is  the  educational  as  well  as  the  religious 
centre  of  the  village.  In  the  pastor's  school  the  children  learn 
to  read  and  write  their  own  language,  to  which  the  early  mis- 
sionaries adapted  our  script,  to  do  simple  sums  and  sing  hymns. 
The  missionaries  have  been  opposed  to  teaching  the  natives 
English,  or  in  any  way  weaning  them  away  from  such  of  the 
simplicity  of  their  primitive  existence  as  they  have  not  ac- 
counted harmful.  Accordingly,  although  the  elders  of  the 
church  preach  excellent  sermons  and  in  many  cases  have  an 
extensive  knowledge  of  the  Bible  (which  has  been  translated 
into  Samoan),  although  they  keep  accounts,  and  transact 
lengthy  business  aifairs,  they  speak  no  English,  or  only  very 
little  of  it.  On  Tau  there  were  never  more  than  half  a 
dozen  individuals  at  one  time  who  had  any  knowledge  of 
English. 

The  Naval  Government  has  adopted  the  most  admirable 
policy  of  benevolent  non-interference  in  native  affairs.  It 
establishes  dispensaries  and  conducts  a  hospital  where  native 
nurses  are  trained.  These  nurses  are  sent  out  into  the  villages 
where  they  have  surprising  success  in  the  administration  of  the 
very  simple   remedies  at  their  command,   castor  oil,   iodine, 

[270] 


APPENDIX  III 

argyrol,  alcohol  rubs,  etc.  Through  periodic  administrations 
of  salvarsan  the  more  conspicuous  symptoms  of  yaws  are  rap- 
idly disappearing.  And  the  natives  are  learning  to  come  to 
the  dispensaries  for  medicine  rather  than  aggravate  conjunc- 
tivitis to  blindness  by  applying  irritating  leaf  poultices  to  the 
inflamed  eyes. 

Reservoirs  have  been  constructed  in  most  of  the  villages, 
providing  an  unpolluted  water  supply  at  a  central  fountain 
where  all  the  washing  and  bathing  is  done.  Copra  sheds  in 
each  village  store  the  copra  until  the  government  ship  comes 
to  fetch  it.  Work  on  copra  sheds,  on  village  boats  used  in 
hauling  the  copra  over  the  reef,  on  roads  between  villages,  on 
the  repairs  of  the  water  system,  is  carried  through  by  a  levy 
upon  the  village  as  a  whole,  conforming  perfectly  to  the  na- 
tive pattern  of  communal  work.  The  government  operates 
through  appointed  district  governors  and  county  chiefs,  and 
elected  "mayors"  in  each  village.  The  administrations  of 
these  officials  are  peaceful  and  effective  in  proportion  to  the 
importance  of  their  rank  in  the  native  social  organisation. 
Each  village  also  has  two  policemen  who  act  as  town  criers, 
couriers  on  government  inspections,  and  carriers  of  the  nurses' 
equipment  from  village  to  village.  There  are  also  county 
judges.  A  main  court  is  presided  over  by  an  American  civil 
judge  and  a  native  judge.  The  penal  code  is  a  random  com- 
bination of  government  edicts,  remarkable  for  their  tolerance 
of  native  custom.  When  no  pronouncement  on  a  point  of 
law  is  found  in  this  code,  the  laws  of  the  state  of  California, 
liberally  interpreted  and  revised,  are  used  to  provide  a  legal- 
istic basis  for  the  court's  decision.  These  courts  have  taken 
over  the  settlement  of  disputes  concerning  important  titles, 
and  property  rights;  and  the  chief  causes  of  litigation  in  the 
"courthouse"  at  Pago  Pago  are  the  same  which  agitated  the 
native  fonos  some  hundred  years  ago. 

Schools  are  now  maintained  in  many  villages,  where  the 

[271] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

children,  seated  cross-legged  on  the  floor  of  a  large  native 
house,  learn  the  haziest  of  English  from  boys  whose  knowl- 
edge of  the  language  is  little  more  extensive  than  theirs. 
They  also  learn  part  singing,  at  which  they  are  extraordinarily 
adept,  and  to  play  cricket  and  many  other  games.  The  schools 
are  useful  in  instilling  elementary  ideas  of  hygiene,  and  in 
breaking  down  the  barriers  between  age  and  sex  groups  and 
narrow  residential  units.  From  the  pupils  in  the  outlying 
schools  the  most  promising  are  selected  to  become  nurses, 
teachers,  and  candidates  for  the  native  marine  corps,  the 
FkafitaSj  who  constitute  the  police,  hospital  corpsmen  and  in- 
terpreters for  the  naval  administration.  The  Samoans'  keen 
feeling  for  social  distinction  makes  them  particularly  able  to 
co-operate  with  a  government  in  which  there  is  a  hierarchy 
of  oflScialdom;  the  shoulder  stars  and  bars  are  fitted  into  their 
own  system  of  rank  without  confusion.  When  the  Governor 
and  group  of  officers  pay  an  official  visit,  the  native-talking 
chief  distributes  the  kava,  first  to  the  Governor,  then  to  the 
highest  chief  among  the  hosts,  then  to  the  Commander  of  the 
Naval  Yard,  then  to  the  next  highest  chief,  without  any  diffi- 
culty. 

In  all  the  descriptions  of  Samoan  life,  one  of  the  points 
which  must  have  struck  the  reader  most  forcibly  is  the  ex- 
treme flexibility  of  the  civilisation  as  it  is  found  to-day.  This 
flexibility  is  the  result  of  the  blending  of  the  various  European 
ideas,  beliefs,  mechanical  devices,  with  the  old  primitive  cul- 
ture. It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  it  is  due  to  some  genius 
in  the  Samoan  culture  itself,  or  to  fortunate  accident,  that 
these  foreign  elements  have  received  such  a  thorough  and 
harmonious  acculturation.  In  many  parts  of  the  South  Seas 
contact  with  white  civilisation  has  resulted  in  the  complete 
degeneration  of  native  life,  the  loss  of  native  techniques, 
and  traditions,  and  the  annihilation  of  the  past.  In  Samoa 
this  is  not  so.      The   growing   child   is    faced   by   a  smaller 

[272] 


APPENDIX  III 

dilemma  than  that  which  confronts  the  American-born  child 
of  European  parentage.  The  gap  between  parents  and  chil- 
dren is  narrow  and  painless,  showing  few  of  the  unfortunate 
aspects  usually  present  in  a  period  of  transition.  The  new  cul- 
ture, by  offering  alternative  careers  to  the  children  has  some- 
what lightened  the  parental  yoke.  But  essentially  the  children 
are  still  growing  up  in  a  homogeneous  community  with  a  uni- 
form set  of  ideals  and  aspirations.  The  present  ease  of  ado- 
lescence among  Samoan  girls  which  has  been  described  cannot 
safely  be  attributed  to  a  period  of  transition.  The  fact  that 
adolescence  can  be  a  period  of  unstressed  development  is  just 
as  significant.  Given  no  additional  outside  stimulus  or  attempt 
to  modify  conditions,  Samoan  culture  might  remain  very  much 
the  same  for  two  hundred  years. 

But  it  is  only  fair  to  point  out  that  Samoan  culture,  before 
white  influence,  was  less  flexible  and  dealt  less  kindly  with  the 
individual  aberrant.  Aboriginal  Samoa  was  harder  on  the  girl 
sex  delinquent  than  is  present-day  Samoa.  And  the  reader 
must  not  mistake  the  conditions  which  have  been  described  for 
the  aboriginal  ones,  nor  for  typical  primitive  ones.  Present- 
day  Samoan  civilisation  is  simply  the  result  of  the  fortuitous 
and  on  the  whole  fortunate  impetus  of  a  complex,  intrusive 
culture  upon  a  simpler  and  most  hospitable  indigenous  one. 

In  former  times,  the  head  of  the  household  had  life  and 
death  powers  over  every  individual  under  his  roof.  The 
American  legal  system  and  the  missionary  teachings  between 
them  have  outlawed  and  banished  these  rights.  The  indi- 
vidual still  benefits  by  the  communal  ownership  of  property, 
by  the  claims  which  he  has  on  all  family  land;  but  he  no 
longer  suffers  from  an  irksome  tyranny  which  could  be  en- 
forced with  violence  and  possible  death.  Deviations  from 
chastity  were  formerly  punished  in  the  case  of  girls  by  a  very 
severe  beating  and  a  stigmatising  shaving  of  the  head.  Mis- 
sionaries have  discouraged  the  beating  and  head  shaving,  but 

[273] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

failed  to  substitute  as  forceful  an  inducement  to  circumspect 
conduct.  The  girl  whose  sex  activities  are  frowned  upon  by 
her  family  is  in  a  far  better  position  than  that  of  her  great- 
grandmother.  The  navy  has  prohibited,  the  church  has  inter- 
dicted the  defloration  ceremony,  formerly  an  inseparable  part 
of  the  marriages  of  girls  of  rank;  and  thus  the  most  potent 
inducement  to  virginity  has  been  abolished.  If  for  these 
cruel  and  primitive  methods  of  enforcing  a  stricter  regime 
there  had  been  substituted  a  religious  system  which  seriously 
branded  the  sex  oifender,  or  a  legal  system  which  prosecuted 
and  punished  her,  then  the  new  hybrid  civilisation  might  have 
been  as  heavily  fraught  with  possibilities  of  conflict  as  the  old 
civilisation  undoubtedly  was. 

This  holds  true  also  for  the  ease  with  which  young  people 
change  their  residence.  Formerly  it  might  have  been  neces- 
sary to  flee  to  a  great  distance  to  avoid  being  beaten  to  death. 
Now  the  severe  beatings  are  deprecated,  but  the  running-away 
pattern  continues.  The  old  system  of  succession  must  have 
produced  many  heartburns  in  the  sons  who  did  not  obtain  the 
best  titles;  to-day  two  new  professions  are  open  to  the  ambi- 
tious, the  ministry  and  the  Fitafitas.  The  taboo  system,  al- 
though never  as  rigorous  in  Samoa  as  in  other  parts  of  Poly- 
nesia, undoubtedly  compelled  the  people  to  lead  more  circum- 
spect lives  and  stressed  more  vividly  diflFerence  in  rank.  The 
few  economic  changes  which  have  been  introduced  have  been 
just  suflficient  to  slightly  upset  the  system  of  prestige  which 
was  based  on  display  and  lavish  distribution  of  property.  Ac- 
quiring wealth  is  easier,  through  raising  copra,  government 
employment,  or  manufacturing  curios  for  the  steamer-tourist 
trade  on  the  main  island.  Many  high  chiefs  do  not  find  it 
worth  while  to  keep  up  the  state  to  which  they  are  entitled, 
while  numerous  upstarts  have  an  opportunity  to  acquire  pres- 
tige denied  to  them  under  a  slower  method  of  accumulating 
wealth.     The  intensity  of  local   feeling  with   its  resulting 

[274] 


APPENDIX  III 

feuds,  wars,  jealousies  and  conflicts  (in  the  case  of  inter- 
marriage between  villages)  is  breaking  down  with  the  im- 
proved facilities  for  transportation  and  the  co-operation  be- 
tween villages  in  religious  and  educational  matters. 

Superior  tools  have  partially  done  away  with  the  tyranny  of 
the  master  craftsman.  The  man  who  is  poor,  but  ambitious, 
finds  it  easier  to  acquire  a  guest  house  than  it  would  have 
been  when  the  laborious  highly  specialised  work  was  done 
with  stone  tools.  The  use  of  some  money  and  of  cloth,  pur- 
chased from  traders,  has  freed  women  from  part  of  the  im- 
mense labour  of  manufacturing  mats  and  tapa  as  units  of 
exchange  and  for  clothing.  On  the  other  hand,  the  introduc- 
tion of  schools  has  taken  an  army  of  useful  little  labourers 
out  of  the  home,  especially  in  the  case  of  the  little  girls  who 
cared  for  the  babies,  and  so  tied  the  adult  women  more  closely 
to  routine  domestic  tasks. 

Puberty  was  formerly  much  more  stressed  than  it  is  to-day. 
The  menstrual  taboos  against  participation  in  the  kava  cere- 
mony and  in  certain  kinds  of  cooking  were  felt  and  enforced. 
The  girl's  entrance  into  the  Aualuma  was  always,  not  just 
occasionally,  marked  by  a  feast.  The  unmarried  girls  and 
the  widows  slept,  at  least  part  of  the  time,  in  the  house  of 
the  taufo.  The  taufo  herself  had  a  much  harder  life.  To- 
day she  pounds  the  kava  root,  but  in  her  mother's  day  it  was 
chewed  until  jaws  ached  from  the  endless  task.  Formerly, 
should  a  defection  from  chastity  be  disclosed  at  her  marriage, 
she  faced  being  beaten  to  death.  The  adolescent  boy  faced  tat- 
tooing, a  painful,  wearisome  proceeding,  additionally  stressed 
by  group  ceremony  and  taboo.  To-day,  scarcely  half  of  the 
young  men  are  tattooed;  the  tattooing  is  performed  at  a  much 
more  advanced  age  and  has  no  connection  with  puberty;  the 
ceremonies  have  vanished  and  it  has  become  a  mere  matter  of 
a  fee  to  the  artist. 

The  prohibitions  against  blood  revenge  and  personal  vio- 

[275] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

lence  have  worked  like  a  yeast  in  giving  greater  personal  free- 
dom. As  many  of  the  crimes  which  were  formerly  punished 
in  this  fashion  are  not  recognised  as  crimes  by  the  new  au- 
thorities, no  new  mechanism  of  punishment  has  been  devised 
for  the  man  who  marries  the  divorced  wife  of  a  man  of 
higher  rank,  the  miscreant  who  gossips  outside  his  village  and 
so  brings  his  village  into  disrepute,  the  insolent  detractor  who 
recites  another's  genealogy,  or  the  naughty  boy  who  removes 
the  straws  from  the  pierced  cocoanuts  and  thus  offers  an  un- 
speakable affront  to  visitors.  And  the  Samoan  is  not  in  the 
habit  of  committing  many  of  the  crimes  listed  in  our  legal 
code.  He  steals  and  is  fined  by  the  government  as  he  was 
formerly  fined  by  the  village.  But  he  comes  into  very  slight 
conflict  with  the  central  authorities.  He  is  too  accustomed  to 
taboos  to  mind  a  quarantine  prohibition  which  parades  under 
the  same  guise;  too  accustomed  to  the  exactions  of  his  rela- 
tions to  fret  under  the  small  taxation  demands  of  the  govern- 
ment. Even  the  stern  attitude  formerly  taken  by  the  adults 
towards  precocity  has  now  been  subdued,  for  what  is  a  sin  at 
home  becomes  a  virtue  at  school. 

The  new  influences  have  drawn  the  teeth  of  the  old  cul- 
ture. Cannibalism,  war,  blood  revenge,  the  life  and  death 
power  of  the  matai^  the  punishment  of  a  man  who  broke  a 
village  edict  by  burning  his  house,  cutting  down  his  trees, 
killing  his  pigs,  and  banishing  his  family,  the  cruel  defloration 
ceremony,  the  custom  of  laying  waste  plantations  on  the  way 
to  a  funeral,  the  enormous  loss  of  life  in  making  long  voy- 
ages in  small  canoes,  the  discomfort  due  to  widespread  disease 
— all  these  have  vanished.  And  as  yet  their  counterparts  in 
producing  misery  have  not  appeared. 

Economic  instability,  poverty,  the  wage  system,  the  separa- 
tion of  the  worker  from  his  land  and  from  his  tools,  modern 
warfare,  industrial  disease,  the  abolition  of  leisure,  the  irk- 
someness  of  a  bureaucratic  government — these  have  not  yet 

[276] 


APPENDIX  III 

invaded  an  island  without  resources  worth  exploiting.  Nor 
have  the  subtler  penalties  of  civilisation,  neuroses,  philosophical 
perplexities,  the  individual  tragedies  due  to  an  increased  con- 
sciousness of  personality  and  to  a  greater  specialisation  of  sex 
feeling,  or  conflicts  between  religion  and  other  ideals,  reached 
the  natives.  The  Samoans  have  only  taken  such  parts  of  our 
culture  as  made  their  life  more  comfortable,  their  culture 
more  flexible,  the  concept  of  the  mercy  of  God  without  the 
doctrine  of  original  sin. 


[277] 


APPENDIX  IV 

THE    MENTALLY   DEFECTIVE   AND  THE   MENTALLY 
DISEASED 

Without  any  training  in  the  diagnosis  of  the  mentally  dis- 
eased and  without  any  apparatus  for  exact  diagnosis  of  the 
mentally  defective,  I  can  simply  record  a  number  of  amateur 
observations  which  may  be  of  interest  to  the  specialist  inter- 
ested in  the  possibilities  of  studying  the  pathology  of  primitive 
peoples.  In  the  Manu'a  Archipelago  with  a  population  of  a  lit- 
tle over  two  thousand  people,  I  saw  one  case  which  would 
be  classed  as-idiocy,  one  imbecile,  one  boy  of  fourteen  who 
appeared  to  be  both  feeble-minded  and  insane,  one  man  of 
thirty  who  showed  a  well-systematised  delusion  of  grandeur, 
and  one  sexual  invert  who  approximated  in  a  greater  develop- 
ment of  the  breasts,  mannerism  and  attitudes  of  women  and 
a  preference  for  women's  activities,  to  the  norm  of  the  oppo- 
site sex.  The  idiot  child  was  one  of  seven  children;  he  had 
a  younger  brother  who  had  walked  for  over  a  year,  and  the 
mother  declared  that  there  were  two  years  between  the  chil- 
dren. His  legs  were  shrunken  and  withered,  he  had  an  enor- 
mous belly  and  a  large  head  set  very  low  on  his  shoulders.  He 
could  neither  walk  nor  talk,  drooled  continually,  and  had  no 
command  over  his  excretory  functions.  The  imbecile  girl 
lived  on  another  island  and  I  had  no  opportunity  to  observe 
her  over  any  length  of  time.  She  was  one  or  two  years  past 
puberty  and  was  pregnant  at  the  time  that  I  saw  her.  She 
could  talk  and  perform  the  simple  tasks  usually  performed  by 
children  of  five  or  six.  She  seemed  to  only  half  realise  her 
condition  and  giggled  foolishly  or  stared  vacantly  when  it  was 

[278] 


APPENDIX  IV 

mentioned.  The  fourteen-year-old  boy  was  at  the  time  when 
I  saw  him  definitely  demented,  giving  an  external  picture  of 
catatonic  dementia  pra^cox.  He  took  those  attitudes  which 
were  urged  upon  him,  at  times,  however,  becoming  violent  and 
unmanageable.  The  relatives  insisted  that  he  had  always  been 
stupid  but  only  recently  become  demented.  For  this  I  have 
only  their  word  as  I  was  only  able  to  observe  the  boy  during 
a  few  days.  In  no  one  of  these  three  cases  of  definite  mental 
deficiency  was  there  any  family  history  which  threw  any  light 
upon  the  matter.  Among  the  girls  whom  I  studied  in  detail 
only  one,  Sala,  discussed  in  Chapter  X,  was  sufficiently  inferior 
to  the  general  norm  of  intelligence  to  approximate  to  a  moron. 

The  man  with  the  systematised  delusion  of  grandeur  was 
said  to  be  about  thirty  years  of  age.  Gaunt  and  emaciated, 
he  looked  much  older.  He  believed  that  he  was  Tufele,  the 
high  chief  of  another  island  and  the  governor  of  the  entire 
archipelago.  The  natives  conspired  against  him  to  rob  him  of 
his  rank  and  to  exalt  an  usurper  in  his  stead.  He  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Tufele  family  but  only  very  remotely  so  that  his 
delusion  bore  no  relation  to  reality  as  he  would  never  have 
had  any  hope  of  succeeding  to  the  title.  The  natives,  he  said, 
refused  to  give  him  food,  mocked  him,  disallowed  his  claims, 
did  their  best  to  destroy  him,  while  a  few  white  people  were 
wise  enough  to  recognise  his  rank.  (The  natives  instructed 
visitors  to  address  him  in  the  chief's  language  because  he  con- 
sented to  dance,  a  weird  pathetic  version  of  the  usual  style, 
only  when  so  opportuned.)  He  had  no  outbreaks  of  violence, 
was  morose,  recessive,  only  able  to  work  at  times  and  never 
able  to  do  heavy  work  or  to  be  trusted  to  carry  through  any 
complicated  task.  He  was  treated  with  universal  gentleness 
and  toleration  by  his  relatives  and  neighbours. 

From  informants  I  obtained  accounts  of  four  cases  on 
Tutuila  which  sounded  like  the  manic  stage  of  manic  de- 
pressive insanity.     All  four  of  these  individuals  had  been  vio- 

[279] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

lently  destructive,  and  uncontrollable  for  a  period  of  time,  but 
had  later  resumed  what  the  natives  considered  normal  func- 
tioning. An  old  woman  who  had  died  some  ten  years  before 
was  said  to  have  compulsively  complied  with  any  command 
that  was  given  her.  There  was  one  epileptic  boy  in  Tau,  a 
member  of  an  otherwise  normal  family  of  eight  children. 
He  fell  from  a  tree  during  a  seizure  and  died  from  a  frac- 
tured skull  soon  after  I  came  to  Manu'a.  A  little  girl  of 
about  ten  who  was  paralysed  from  the  waist  down  was  said  to 
be  suffering  from  an  overdose  of  salvarsan  and  to  have  been 
normal  until  she  was  live  or  six  years  old. 

Only  two  individuals,  one  a  married  woman  of  thirty  or 
so,  the  other  a  girl  of  nineteen,  discussed  in  Chapter  X,  showed 
a  definite  neurasthenic  constitution.  The  married  woman  was 
barren  and  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  explaining  her  barren- 
ness as  need  of  an  operation.  The  presence  of  an  excellent 
surgeon  at  the  Samoan  hospital  during  the  preceding  two  years 
had  greatly  enhanced  the  prestige  -of  operations.  On  Tutuila, 
near  the  Naval  Station,  I  encountered  several  middle-aged 
women  obsessed  with  operations  which  they  had  undergone 
or  were  soon  to  undergo.  Whether  this  vogue  of  modern 
surgery,  by  giving  it  special  point,  has  added  to  the  amount 
of  apparent  neurasthenia  or  not,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 

Of  hysterical  manifestations,  I  encountered  only  one,  a 
girl  of  fourteen  or  fifteen  with  a  bad  tic  in  the  right  side  of 
her  face.  I  only  saw  her  for  a  few  minutes  on  a  journey 
and  was  unable  to  make  any  investigations.  I  neither  saw 
nor  heard  of  any  cases  of  hysterical  blindness  or  deafness,  nor 
or  any  anaesthesias  nor  paralyses. 

I  saw  no  cases  of  cretinism.  There  were  a  few  children 
who  had  been  blind  from  birth.  Blindness,  due  to  the  ex- 
tremely violent  methods  used  by  the  native  practitioners  in 
the  treatment  of  "Samoan  conjunctivitis,"  is  common. 

The  pathology  which  is  immediately  apparent  to  any  visitor 

[280] 


APPENDIX  IV 

in  a  Samoan  village  is  mainly  due  to  the  diseased  eyes,  ele- 
phantiasis, and  abscesses  and  sores  of  various  sorts,  but  the  stig- 
mata of  degeneration  are  almost  entirely  absent. 

There  was  one  albino,  a  girl  of  ten,  with  no  albinism  in 
the  recorded  family  history,  but  as  one  parent,  now  dead,  had 
come  from  another  island,  this  was  not  at  all  conclusive  data. 


[281] 


APPENDIX  V 

MATERIALS   UPON   WHICH   THE  ANALYSIS   IS   BASED 

This  study  included  sixty-eight  girls  between  the  ages  of 
eight  and  nine  and  nineteen  or  twenty — all  the  girls  between 
these  ages  in  the  three  villages  of  Faleasao,  Luma  and  Siufaga, 
the  three  villages  on  the  west  coast  of  the  island  of  Tau  in 
the  Manu'a  Archipelago  of  the  Samoan  Islands. 

Owing  to  the  impossibility  of  obtaining  accurate  dates  of 
birth  except  in  a  very  few  cases,  the  ages  must  all  be  regarded 
as  approximate.  The  approximations  were  based  upon  the  few 
known  ages  and  the  testimony  of  relatives  as  to  the  relative 
age  of  the  others.  For  purpose  of  description  and  analysis  I 
have  divided  them  roughly  into  three  groups,  the  children  who 
showed  no  mammary  signs  of  puberty,  twenty-eight  in  num- 
ber, ranging  in  age  from  eight  or  nine  to  about  twelve  or 
thirteen;  the  children  who  would  probably  mature  within  the 
next  year  or  year  and  a  half,  fourteen  in  number,  ranging  in 
age  from  twelve  or  thirteen  to  fourteen  or  fifteen;  and  the 
girls  who  were  past  puberty,  but  who  were  not  yet  considered 
as  adults  by  the  community,  twenty-five  in  number,  ranging 
in  age  from  fourteen  or  fifteen  to  nineteen  or  twenty.  These 
two  latter  groups  and  eleven  of  the  younger  children  were 
studied  in  detail,  making  a  group  of  fifty.  The  remaining 
fourteen  children  in  the  youngest  group  were  studied  less  care- 
fully as  individuals.  They  formed  a  large  check  group  in 
studying  play,  gang  life,  the  development  of  brother  and 
sister  avoidance,  the  attitude  between  the  sexes,  the  difiFerence 
in  the  interests  and  activities  of  this  age  and  the  girls  ap- 
proaching puberty.    They  also  provided  abundant  material  for 

[282] 


APPENDIX  V 

the  study  of  the  education  and  discipline  of  the  child  in  the 
home.  The  two  tables  present  in  summary  form  the  major 
statistical  facts  which  were  gathered  about  the  children  spe- 
cially studied,  order  of  birth,  number  of  brothers  and  sisters, 
death  or  remarriage  or  divorce  of  parents,  residence  of  the 
child,  type  of  household  in  which  the  child  lived  and  whether 
the  girl  was  the  daughter  of  the  head  of  the  household  or  not. 
The  second  table  relates  only  to  the  twenty-five  girls  past 
puberty  and  gives  length  of  time  since  first  menstruation,  fre- 
quency of  menstruation,  amount  and  location  of  menstrual 
pain,  the  presence  or  absence  of  masturbation,  homosexual  and 
heterosexual  experience,  and  the  very  pertinent  fact  of  resi- 
dence or  non-residence  in  the  pastor's  household.  A  survey 
of  the  summary  analyses  joined  to  these  tables  will  show  that 
these  fifty  girls  present  a  fairly  wide  range  in  family  organi- 
sation, order  of  birth,  and  relation  to  parents.  The  group 
may  be  fairly  considered  as  representative  of  the  various  types 
of  environment,  personal  and  social,  which  are  found  in 
Samoan  civilisation  as  it  is  to-day. 


DISTRIBUTION    OF   GROUP   OF   ADOLESCENTS   IN    RELATION    TO 
FIRST    MENSTRUATION 

Within  last  six  months 6 

Within  last  year 3 

Within  last  two  years 5 

Within  last  three  years 7 

Within  last  four  years 3 

Within  last  five  years I 

Total 25 

[283] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 


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[285] 


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COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

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[286] 


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APPENDIX  V 

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[287] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

KEY  TO  TABLE  ON  FAMILY  STRUCTURE 

Column  Subject 

1  Number  of  older  brothers 

2  Number  of  older  sisters 

3  Number  of  younger  brothers 

4  Number  of  younger  sisters 

5  Half    brother,    fluSy    number    older,    minus,    number 

younger 

6  Half     sister,     fluSy   number     older,     m-inuSj     number 

younger 

7  Mother  dead 

8  Father  dead 

9  Child  of  mother's  second  marriage 

10  Child  of  father's  second  marriage 

1 1  Mother  remarried 
.12      Father  remarried 

13  Residence  with  both  parents  and  patrilocal 

14  Residence  with  both  parents  and  matrilocal 

15  Residence  with  mother  only 

16  Residence  with  father  only 

17  Parents  divorced 

18  Residence  with  paternal  relatives 

19  Residence  with  maternal  relatives 

20  Father  is  m-atai  of  household 

21  Residence   in   a  biological    family,   i.e.,   household   of 

parents,  children,  and  no  more  than  two  additional 
relatives. 

X  in  the  table  means  the  presence  of  trait.     For  example,  x 
in  column  7  means  that  the  mother  is  dead. 


[288] 


I 
I 


APPENDIX  V 

ANALYSIS   OF   TABLE    ON    FAMILY   STRUCTURE 

There  were  among  the  sixty-eight  girls: 

7  only  children 

15  youngest  children 

5  oldest  children 

5  with  half  brother  or  sister  in  the  same  household 

5  whose  mother  was  dead 

14  whose  father  was  dead 

3  who  were  children  of  mother's  second  marriage 
2  children  of  father's  second  marriage 

7  whose  mother  had  remarried 

5  whose  father  had  remarried 

4  residence  with  both  parents  patrilocal 

8  residence  with  both  parents  matrilocal 

9  residence  with  mother  only 
I  residence  with  father  only 
7  parents  divorced 

12  residence    with    paternal    relatives     (without    either 
parent) 

6  residence    with    maternal    relatives    (without    either 

parent) 
15,  or  30%,  whose  fathers  were  heads  of  households 
12   who  belonged  to  a  qualified  biological  family   (i.e., 
a  family  which  during  my  stay  on  the  island  com- 
prised only  two  relatives  beside  the  parents  and 
children). 

INTELLIGENCE    TESTS    USED 

It  was  impossible  to  standardise  any  intelligence  tests  and 
consequently  my  results  are  quantitatively  valueless.  But  as 
I  had  had  some  experience  in  the  diagnostic  use  of  tests,  I 
found  them  useful  in  forming  a  preliminary  estimate  of  the 

[289] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

girls'  intelligence.  Also,  the  natives  have  long  been  accus- 
tomed to  examinations  which  the  missionary  authorities  con- 
duct each  year,  and  the  knowledge  that  an  examination  is  in 
progress  makes  them  respect  the  privacy  of  investigator  and 
subject.  In  this  way  it  was  possible  for  me  to  get  the  chil- 
dren alone,  without  antagonising  their  parents.  Furthermore, 
the  novelty  of  the  tests,  especially  the  colour-naming  and 
picture  interpretation  tests,  served  to  divert  their  attention 
from  other  questions  which  I  wished  to  ask  them.  The  re- 
sults of  the  tests  showed  a  much  narrower  range  than  would 
be  expected  in  a  group  varying  in  age  from  ten  to  twenty. 
Without  any  standardisation  it  is  impossible  to  draw  any  more 
detailed  conclusions.  I  shall,  however,  include  a  few  com- 
ments about  the  peculiar  responses  which  the  girls  made  to 
particular  tests,  as  I  believe  such  comment  is  useful  in  evaluat- 
ing intelligence  testing  among  primitive  peoples  and  also  in 
estimating  the  possibilities  of  such  testing. 

Tests  Used 

Colour  Naming.  lOO  half -inch  squares,  red,  yellow, 
black  and  blue. 

Rote  Memory  for  Digits.  Customary  Stanford  Binet 
directions  were  used. 

Digit  Symbol  Substitution.  72  one-inch  figures,  square, 
circle,  cross,  triangle  and  diamond. 

Opposites.  23  words.  Stimulus  words:  fat,  white,  long, 
old,  tall,  wise,  beautiful,  late,  night,  near,  hot,  win, 
thick,  sweet,  tired,  slow,  rich,  happy,  darkness,  up, 
inland,  inside,  sick. 

Picture  Interpretation.  Three  reproductions  from  the 
moving  picture  Moana,  showing,  (a)  Two  children 
who  had  caught  a  cocoanut  crab  by  smoking  it  out  of 
the  rocks  above  them,  (b)  A  canoe  putting  out  to  sea 
after  bonito  as  evidenced  by  the  shape  of  the  canoe 

[290] 


I 


APPENDIX  V 

and  the  position  of  the  crew,  (^r)  A  Samoan  girl  sitting 
on  a  log  eating  a  small  live  fish  which  a  boy,  gar- 
landed and  stretched  on  the  ground  at  her  feet,  had 
given  her. 
Ball  and  Field.  Standard-sized  circle. 
Standard  directions  were  given  throughout  in  all  cases  en- 
tirely in  Samoan.  Many  children,  unused  to  such  definitely 
set  tasks,  although  all  are  accustomed  to  the  use  of  slate  and 
of  pencil  and  paper,  had  to  be  encouraged  to  start.  The  ball 
and  field  test  was  the  least  satisfactory  as  in  over  fifty  per 
cent  of  the  cases  the  children  followed  an  accidental  first  line 
and  simply  completed  an  elaborate  pattern  within  the  circle. 
When  this  pattern  happened  by  accident  to  be  either  the  In- 
ferior or  Superior  solution,  the  child's  comment  usually  be- 
trayed the  guiding  idea  as  aesthetic  rather  than  as  an  attempt 
to  solve  the  problem.  The  children  whom  I  was  led  to  be- 
lieve to  be  most  intelligent,  subordinated  the  zesthetic  consid- 
eration to  the  solution  of  the  problem,  but  the  less  intelligent 
children  were  sidetracked  by  their  interest  in  the  design  they 
could  make  much  more  easily  than  are  children  in  our  civili- 
sation. In  only  two  cases  did  I  find  a  rote  memory  for  digits 
which  exceeded  six  digits;  two  girls  completing  seven  suc- 
cessfully. The  Samoan  civilisation  puts  the  slightest  of  pre- 
miums upon  rote  memory  of  any  sort.  On  the  digit-symbol 
test  they  were  slow  to  understand  the  point  of  the  test  and 
very  few  learned  the  combinations  before  the  last  line  of  the 
test  sheet.  The  picture  interpretation  test  was  the  most  sub- 
ject to  vitiation  through  a  cultural  factor;  almost  all  of  the 
children  adopted  some  highly  stylized  form  of  comment  and 
then  pursued  it  through  one  balanced  sentence  after  another: 
"Beautiful  is  the  boy  and  beautiful  is  the  girl.  Beautiful 
is  the  garland  of  the  boy  and  beautiful  is  the  wreath  of  the 
girl,"  etc.  In  the  two  pictures  which  emphasised  human  be- 
ings no  discussion  could  be  commenced  until  the  question  of 

[291] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA  ? 

the  relationship  of  the  characters  had  been  ascertained.  The 
opposites  test  was  the  one  which  they  did  most  easily,  a  natural 
consequence  of  a  vivid  interest  in  words,  an  interest  which 
leads  them  to  spend  most  of  their  mythological  speculation 
upon  punning  explanations  of  names. 

CHECK    LIST    USED   IN    INVESTIGATION   OF   EACH 
girl's    EXPERIENCE 

In  order  to  standardise  this  investigation  I  made  out  a  ques- 
tionnaire which  I  filled  out  for  each  girl.  The  questions  were'' 
not  asked  consecutively  but  from  time  to  time  I  added  one 
item  of  information  after  another  to  the  record  sheets.  The 
various  items  fell  into  the  loose  groupings  indicated  below. 

Agricultural  froficiency.  Weeding,  selecting  leaves  for  use 
in  cooking,  gathering  bananas,  taro,  breadfruit,  cutting 
cocoanuts  for  copra. 

Cooking.  Skinning  bananas,  grating  cocoanut,  preparing 
breadfruit,  mixing  falusamiy^  wrapping  falusamiy  mak- 
ing tafoloy\  making  banana  foiy  making  arrow-root 
pudding. 

Fishing.  Daylight  reef  fishing,  torchlight  reef  fishing,  gath- 
ering lolcy  catching  small  fish  on  reef,  using  the  "come 
hither"  octopus  stick,  gathering  large  crabs. 

Weaving.  Balls,  pin-wheels,  baskets  to  hold  food  gifts,  carry- 
ing baskets,  woven  blinds,  floor  mats,  fishing  baskets,  food 
trays,  thatching  mats,  roof  bonetting  mats,  plain  fans, 
pandanus  floor  mats,  bed  mats  (number  of  designs  known 

*  Palusami — a  pudding  prepared  from  grated  cocoanut,  flavoured 
with  red  hot  stone,  mixed  with  sea  water,  and  wrapped  in  taro  leaves, 
from  which  the  acrid  stem  has  been  scorched,  then  in  a  banana  leaf, 
finally  in  a.  breadfruit  leaf. 

t  Tafolo — a  pudding  made  of  breadfruit  with  a  sauce  of  grated 
cocoanut. 

[292] 


APPENDIX  V 

and  number  of  mats  completed),  fine  mats,  dancing 
skirts,  sugar-cane  thatch. 

Bark  cloth  making.  Gathering  paper  mulberry  wands,  scrap- 
ing the  bark,  pounding  the  bark,  using  a  pattern  board, 
tracing  patterns  free  hand. 

Care  of  clothing.  Washing,  ironing,  ironing  starched  clothes, 
sewing,  sewing  on  a  machine,  embroidering. 

Athletics.  Climbing  palm  trees,  swimming,  swimming  in  the 
swimming  hole  within  the  reef,*  playing  cricket. 

Kava  making.  Pounding  the  kava  root,  distributing  the  kava, 
making  the  kava,  shaking  out  the  hibiscus  bark  strainer. 

Proficiency  in  foreign  things.  Writing  a  letter,  telling  time, 
reading  a  calendar,  filling  a  fountain  pen. 

Dancing. 

Reciting  the  family  genealogy. 

Index  of  knowledge  of  the  courtesy  language.  Giving  the 
chiefs'  words  for:  arm,  leg,  food,  house,  dance,  wife, 
sickness,  talk,  sit.  Giving  courtesy  phrases  of  welcome, 
when  passing  in  front  of  some  one. 

Experience  of  life  and  death.  Witnessing  of  birth,  miscar- 
riage, intercourse,  death,  Cresarian  post-mortem  opera- 
tion. 

Marital  preferences^  rank,  residence,  age  of  marriage,  number 
of  children. 

Index  of  knowledge  of  the  social  organisation.  Reason  for 
Cssarian  post-mortem,  proper  treatment  of  a  chief's  bed, 
exactions  of  the  brother  and  sister  taboo,  penalties  at- 
tached to  cocoanut  tafuiy\  proper  treatment  of  a  kava 

*  Swimming-  in  the  hole  within  the  reef  required  more  skill  than 
swimming  in  still  water;  it  involved  diving  and  also  battling  with  a 
water  level  which  changed  several  feet  with  each  great  wave. 

t  Tapui.  The  hieroglj'phic  signs  used  by  the  Samoans  to  protect 
their  property  from  thieves.  The  tapui  calls  down  an  automatic  mag- 
ical penalty  upon  the  transgressor.  The  penalty  for  stealing  from 
property  protected  by  the  cocoanut  tapui  is  boih. 

[293] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

bowl,  the  titles  and  present  incumbents  of  the  titles  of 
the  Manaia  of  Luma,  Siufaga  and  Faleasao,  the  Taupo 
of  Fitiuta,  the  meaning  of  the  Fale  Ula  *  the  Umu  Sa,  f 
the  Mua  o  le  taule'ale'a,  J  the  proper  kinds  of  property 
for  a  marriage  exchange,  who  was  the  high  chief  of 
Luma,  Siufaga,  Faleasao  and  Fitiuta,  and  what  consti- 
tuted the  Lafo  §  of  the  talking  chief. 

*  The  ceremonial  name  of  the  council  house  of  the  Tui  Manu'a. 

■f*  The  sacred  oven  of  food  and  the  ceremony  accompanying  its  pres- 
entation and  the  presentation  of  fine  mats  to  the  carpenters  who  have 
completed  a  new  house. 

$  The  ceremonial  call  of  the  young  men  of  the  village  upon  a  visit- 
ing maiden. 

§  The  ceremonial  perquisite  of  the  talking  chief,  usually  a  piece  of 
tapa,  occasionally  a  fine  mat. 


[294] 


GLOSSARY  OF  NATIVE  TERMS  USED  IN 
THE  TEXT 

Aumaga  ('aumaga) — the  organisation  of  untitled  men  in  each 

Samoan  village. 
Aualuma — the  organisation  of  unmarried  girls  past  puberty, 

wives  of  untitled  men  and  u^idows. 
Afafine — daughter  (man  speaking). 
Aiga — relative. 
Atali'i — son  (man  speaking). 
Avaga — elopement. 

Fa'alupega — the  courtesy  phrases,  recited  in  formal  speeches, 
which  embody  the  social  pattern  of  each  village. 

Fale — house. 

Faletua — "she  who  sits  in  the  back  of  the  house."  The  cour- 
tesy term  for  a  chief's  wife. 

Fono — a  meeting.  Specifically  the  organisation  of  titled  men 
of  a  village,  district  or  island. 

Fitafita — a  member  of  the  native  marine  corps. 

Ifo — to  lower  oneself  to  some  one  whom  one  has  offended  or 

injured. 
Ifoga — the  act  of  doing  so. 

Lavalava — a  loin  cloth,  fastened  by  a  twist  in  the  material 

at  the  waist. 
Lole — a  sort  of  jelly  fish;  applied  by  the  natives  to  candy. 

[295] 


COMING  OF  AGE  IN  SAMOA 

Malaga — a  travelling  party;  a  journey. 

Manaia — the  heir-apparent  of  the  principal  chief;  the  1"  >•.> 
of  the  Aumaga;  the  heir  of  any  important  citief  v 
title  carries  the  privilege  of  giving  a  manaia  titl  '  1.- 
heir. 

Matai — the  holder  of  a  title;  the  head  of  a  househo''^ 

Moetotolo — surreptitious  rape. 

Moni — true,  real. 

Musu — unwillingness,  obstinacy  tov^^ards  any  course  of  action. 

Olomatua — old  woman. 

Papalagi — white  men;  literally,  "sky  bursters."     Foreig   . 
Pua — the  frangipani  tree. 

Soa — a  companion   in   circumcision-    an   ambassador   in       ve 

affairs. 
Soafafine — a  woman  ambassador  in  love  affairs. 
Siva — to  dance;  a  dance. 

Tama — a  child,  a  son  (woman  speaking). 

Tama — father. 

Tamafafine — a  child  of  the  distaff  side  of  the  house. 

Tamatane — a  child  of  the  male  line. 

Tapa — bark  cloth. 

Taule'ale'a — a  member  of  the  Aumaga;  an  untitled  mui 

Taupo — the  village  ceremonial  hostess;  the  girl  whom  a  high 

chief  has  honoured   with  a   title   and   a   distribution   of 

property. 
Tausi — the  courtesy  term  for  the  wife  of  a  talking  chiel, 

literally,  "to  care  for." 
Tei — a  younger  sibling. 
Teine — a  girl. 
Teinetiti — a  little  girl. 

[296] 


GLOSSARY  OF  NATIVE  TERMS 

T:n;i-  -mothe  . 

Toa'ina — an  old  man. 

l^iafafin? — female  sibling  of  a  male. 

Tuag^ne — male  sibling  of  a  female. 

Tulafale — a  talking  chief. 

t  r 

U   1-     Dling  of  the  same  sex. 

«jrE   ON   THE   PRONUNCIATION    OF  SAMOAN   WORDS 

The  vowels  are  all  pronounced  as  in  Italian. 
G  i->  always  pronounced  like  NG. 
Th?  Glottal  stop  is  indicated  by  a  ('). 


THE    END 


[297] 


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University  of  California  Library 
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